Astigmatism

Astigmatism is a condition where your cornea or the transparent front part of your eyeball isn’t a round shape, but rather the shape of a football. The symptoms of astigmatism develop slowly. Some people will have astigmatism from birth and there is no known reason for this. On the other hand, astigmatism may also begin with an eye injury, an eye disease, or surgery. Astigmatism can be considered a refractive error. In normal circumstances, the cornea and lens are curved equally in each direction. This curve helps to focus the light’s ray onto the retina but if your cornea or lens isn’t equally curved, the light rays don’t bend properly. This condition is called astigmatism. If your cornea has a distorted shape, the condition would be corneal astigmatism, while when the shape of your lens is distorted, this means you have lenticular astigmatism. In both cases, your vision of both near and far will be blurry or distorted. There are some cases where the eye shape isn’t completely round and curves in multiple different directions. This condition is called irregular astigmatism however it is much less common.