Bifocal and multifocal contact lenses are designed to provide clear vision at all distances for people who have refractive errors and also are experiencing the normal age-related decline in near vision called presbyopia.
The main sign that you're developing presbyopia — which typically becomes noticeable sometime after age 40 — is that you need to hold your phone, magazines and other reading material farther from your eyes in order to see them clearly.
Bifocal and multifocal contact lenses come in both soft materials and rigid gas permeable (GP) materials. Some can be worn on a disposable basis. That means you have the convenience of throwing the lenses out at specified intervals (even daily, in some cases) and replacing them with fresh, new lenses.
Several lens manufacturers offer multifocal contact lenses made of silicone hydrogel material. These lenses allow significantly more oxygen to reach the cornea than conventional soft lenses for greater wearing comfort and are available for both daily wear and extended wear.
Brands of multifocal silicone hydrogel contact lenses available in the U.S. include: Air Optix Aqua Multifocal (Alcon); Bausch + Lomb Ultra for Presbyopia (Bausch + Lomb); Biofinity Multifocal (CooperVision); and Acuvue Oasys for Presbyopia (Johnson & Johnson Vision Care).
Other options include Duette Progressive (SynergEyes) hybrid contact lenses, which have a central optical zone made of GP lens material for crisp optics and a peripheral fitting zone made of soft silicone hydrogel material for comfort.
Bifocal contacts, multifocal contacts: What's the difference?
Bifocal contacts lenses have two prescriptions in the same lens. Multifocal contact lenses have a range of powers (similar to progressive eyeglass lenses) in each lens.
"Multifocal contacts" also is used as a catch-all term for all contact lenses with more than one power, including bifocal contacts.
How multifocal contact lenses work
Different bifocal and multifocal contact lenses work in different ways, depending on the design of the lens. The designs fall into two basic groups:
Simultaneous vision designs. These multifocal contact lenses have specific regions of the lens designated for far and near (and sometimes intermediate) viewing. Depending on the object being viewed, the wearer's eye uses the region(s) of the lens that provide the sharpest vision. There are two types of simultaneous vision designs: concentric and aspheric (see illustration).
Segmented designs. These rigid gas permeable multifocal lenses are designed much like bifocal and trifocal eyeglasses: the center and top portions of the lens contain the appropriate power for viewing distant objects, and the lower portion of the lens has added magnifying power for viewing near objects. Segmented designs sometimes are called alternating or translating designs.
