Treating Color Blindness

Defective color vision, often referred to as color blindness, ranges from a mild to severe inability to distinguish different color groups or shades. Red-green color deficiences are the most common, but blue-yellow defects also occur.  

Most color vision defects are inherited and affect both eyes. Some color vision loss can be due to diseases that damage the retina, optic nerve or other parts of the visual system. These defects may affect one or both eyes.

Your doctor may test color vision as part of your eye examination, since changes in color vision offer important diagnostic information in a number of eye diseases. Many patients with color vision defects experience problems with work or even normal activities like driving where accurate color differentiation is critical.

You can test your color vision here.

If you have a color deficiency, the good news is that there have been major breakthroughs in our ability to correct for color vision problems. Perhaps the most exciting development are EnChroma® lenses which can correct color vision defects in many patients and are described beautifully in the video below:

ColorLite lenses have recently been introduced and are an alternative to EnChroma lenses for some patients.  Contact lenses such as the X-Chrom® worn in one eye can dramatically improve color perception for contact lens wearers.

If you have any questions about color vision defects or how new technology can improve your vision please call the office for more information. If you would like to try the new EnChroma® glasses we would be happy to arrange an appointment with our licensed optician.