Is There any Treatment for Color Vision Deficiency?
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Color vision deficiency can be either inherited or acquired. If acquired by life events such as head trauma, stroke or eye disease, there is often a good possibility of treatment improving or eliminating color defects.
Take cataracts, for example. As the crystalline lens of the eye hardens and yellows with age, short-wavelength light (blues and greens) is absorbed selectively. Over time discrimination in this part of the light spectrum becomes increasingly difficult. Surgical treatment, increasingly by the implantation of intraocular lenses, offers sufferers a complete cure.
But, unfortunately, this isn't the case with inherited color vision deficiency. Those born with color defects have an incurable, faulty mechanism in the retina of the eye. The cone-like cells in the retina, which enable us to see colors in daylight, contain three different chemicals. Each cone reacts to red, green or blue light, and most people with color deficiency have a problem with one set of chemicals, usually those responsible for red or green colors.
Having said that there is no cure for inherited color defects, this does not mean that it is all doom and gloom. Color vision deficiency should be seen as a continuum, depending on the amount of chemical alteration within the cones.
For many with mild color defects, life can sometimes be frustrating. Learning compensation techniques, however, often results in these individuals committing fewer color-naming errors than those with acquired color vision deficiency. Life-long experience with defective color perception enables mildly affected individuals to overcome most everyday and work problems. Self-help and occasional help from others is the best “treatment”.
One in three people with color vision problems, though, have a more severe form leaving them unable to discriminate strong colors. This group encounters more problems in daily life and the workplace, in particular, and they are likely to ask: “Is there a treatment for color deficiency?”
While acknowledging there is no way of restoring the lost sensation of color, they have heard of colored filters which they hope will help them to pass employment-critical color tests. Red-tinted monocular contact lenses for color deficiency (which help color recognition) have indeed been around for a long time.
Recently, tinted glass lenses, reportedly for colorblindness, have been actively promoted as a “treatment” for red/green color deficiency which will allow the wearer to pass the more exacting Ishihara test. Color-defective would-be pilots and applicants for the armed forces are often among the keenest to believe that these color lenses will help them pass the pre-employment tests, especially since regulations are getting increasingly strict.
Unfortunately, these colored lenses are not a panacea for all color deficient ills:
Related: Is There any Treatment for Color Vision Deficiency?
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