There is a new FDA-approved eye drop on the market called Vizz. This once-daily, prescription eye drop is said to help combat presbyopia, otherwise known as age-related blurry vision.
Drugmaker LENZ Therapeutics touts that with just one drop in each eye, a person’s vision will improve for up to 10 hours, so they won’t have to wear reading glasses.
Dr. Robert Johnson Jr. has been running Johnson Family Eyecare in Latrobe, Pennsylvania for 46 years, and he explains that these eye drops basically act like a focus on a camera lens.
“Vizz and the drug that has come before it, Vuity, have both worked on the same structural function; they cause your iris, or the colored part of your eye, to get smaller and smaller,” Dr. Johnson explained. “As your pupil gets smaller, it becomes apparent that it is like looking through a pinhole, and your depth of focus therefore increases.”
Vizz is priced at $79 a month for 25 doses and $198 for three months, 75 doses, but prices may vary at different pharmacies. There are some side effects, including eye redness, headaches, and dimmed vision.
Dr. Johnson cautions that while these new eye drops may help some, they are not a cure-all for presbyopia, but rather, they are just another good tool in the fight against age-related blurry vision.
“It will work much better for the younger, 40, 50, 55-year-old patients than it will for the 60, 65, 70-year-old patients,” Dr. Johnson said. “Because they have less of a need to focus. By the time you get to be my age, your natural ability to focus is all gone. Therefore, the pupil would have to be made obsessively smaller and smaller. And if that pupil becomes too small, we begin to lose the amount of light that gets into the eye, and now you are going to have a 70-year-old who can read, but who can’t drive when the sun goes down.”
Dr. Johnson advises those interested to consult their eye care professional to determine if these eye drops may be right for you.
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