The abbreviation stands for Cylinder. It represents the amount of lens power you need for astigmatism. If you do not have astigmatism, you may not have anything indicated in this column. The value may be a plus or a minus, and in most cases, the value will be between +/-0.25 to +/-4.00.5 Nov 2018
What does negative Cylinder mean in eye prescription?
Cylinder (CYL) The number in the cylinder column may have a minus sign (for correction of nearsighted astigmatism) or a plus sign (for farsighted astigmatism). If nothing appears in this column, you either don't have astigmatism, or your degree of astigmatism is so small that it doesn't need to be corrected.
What does Cylinder and axis mean on eye prescription?
In the context of an eye prescription. 'Sphere' is basically a measure of how strong your prescription needs to be. The number marked 'axis' describes the orientation of astigmatism. It will be a number between 1 and 180. The number under 'cylinder' provides the lens power needed to correct the astigmatism.6 May 2020