Eye Doctors and Cheap Reading Glasses

Many eye doctors after performing cataract surgery for their patients would advise their patients to get a cheap pair of reading glasses. Eye doctors charge you thousands of dollars to remove your cataracts and if they have done a good job, you should not need to wear any corrective glasses after the surgery.

However, in case you still need glasses, especially for reading or close up work , they will advise you to get something cheap.  So why do eye doctors advise their patients to get cheap reading glasses ?

  1. Is it because they are too poor to afford a good pair of reading glasses after paying so much for the surgery ?
  2. your vision is not important, so a cheap one will do. If your vision is not important, why spend so much money on surgery?

Even if you do not spend much time doing near work, we think you should at least get a decent pair of reading glasses. We will get your eyes tested as there might be some prescription and also made sure the prescription is properly balanced between the 2 eyes, especially if you only have one eye operated on. Optical quality of the prescription lenses, even cheaper ones are superior to those over the counter reading glasses.

However, we have often heard our patients saying their eye doctors advise them to get a cheap pair will do. How cheap ? Those sold in drug stores or pasar malam, costing a few dollars. We are not sure what message eye doctors are sending to their patients when they ask them to get cheap reading glasses. Being eye doctors themselves, we are not sure if they wear cheap reading glasses too .