Does astigmatism develop with age?

[West Rushville]

The new prescription has an astigmatism correction in the one eye.My old prescription:R sphere -0.50 cylindral DS, L -0.50 cylindrical DS My New prescription:R sphere -0.25 cylinder -0.50 axis 148, L sphere -0.59 cylindrical DS.I am having a hard time with my new lenses as I did not have trouble with my prior prescription and now everything seems to have a "glowing" quality.

[Meyers Chuck]

First I must tell you that normally the astigmatism do not develop with age. Usually, if you don’t have it, will develop only in special cases, and if you have it, Will be there all the time. There are some factors as eye trauma, a pterygion, or eye surgery that can contribute to development of astigmatism. If you had none from above, is more likely that you already had this eye condition before, but it was not corrected.

[West Rutland]

In your case,You said that the cylinder is -0.50 diopters. This means that you had this small cylinder before, but your first optometrist choose not to correct this, maybe because you had a good vision without it, only with the spherical part. This is small, so if your vision was better before, without the cylinder part then I suggest you to return to the previous glasses without the cylinder. Your vision will be the same, but without the glowing part.