monovision from cataract surgery

I am going for cataract surgery and wonder about monovision. My left eye is my dominant eye.
1. I wonder if it is a good idea to ask for minus 1.75 in my right eye and perfect distance vision in my left eye. Or is this too great a difference for the brains to cope? My 2 eyes were about minus 4.75 and minus 5.25 before my cataracts.  
2. Will I still need to wear reading glasses as I understand that minus 1.75 is not good enough for reading smallprint? I saw an optician about contact lens trial for monovision but he says it is not possible as I have cataracts.

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

How bad are the cataracts that they can't do a CTL trial?  Most of my patients are happy with the monovision you describe and only need reading glasses for small print.  Worse case cenario is you don't like it and you wear bifocal glasses afterwards.

HV

[lizziebabe]

Many thanks. for your comments.
1. I understand that cataract surgery is not an exact science and I may not get the strength of the implants I want. But someone told me that if I want an implant for perfect distance vision, then it is quite likely I will get it but not for any other strength eg. minus 1.75. Is this correct?
2 my cataract is not too bad and I can see but not VERY well. Certainly I can see much better with distance glasses than without even with cataracts.
3. Should I stick to minus 1.75 in my non dominant eye and perfect distance in my dominant eye or should I go for minus 1.75 and minus 0.5. or some other arrangement?

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

1.  No.  We usually get close to what we aim for no matter what the strenght.  Same chance getting a 175 on target as a 0 ( distance).

2.  You could stll get a monovision trial unless your best corrected vision is worse than 20/50 or so.  At least to blur the nondominant eye for distance to see if the one eye can handle it.

3.  That should be decided by you and your surgeon depending on how confident he/she is that you will get what you aim for.

[lizziebabe]

    Many thanks again for your very helpful comments.
    You mentioned that the worse case cenario will be for me to wear bifocal glasses if I dont like monovision.
  1.  Does this mean wearing glasses with 2 very different lenses. If I were minus 1.75 in my right eye and and perfect distance vision in my dominant left eye, what will my bifocal lenses be for the right and left eye?
  2.Can I wear multifocal instead of bifocal as it looks better.
    Many thanks for all your help and sorry to ask so many questions.