Astigmatism is a type of focusing error or refractive error of the eye. Technically speaking, when a person looks at a point object, he is not looking it as a point, but as a line. Why this happens is because the curvature of the cornea is irregular. When the corneal curvature is too steep, then the focusing points come and lie in front of the retina, or the projector part or the projector screen of the eye. This condition leads to myopia or short sightnedness. When the lights, they focus behind the retina, this leads to hypermetropia or far sightedness. But when there is an irregularity in the curvature at different axis or meridian, the point, the lights don’t come and focus and come to a single point. Instead there are multiple points, and hence a point object appears as a focal line This kind of refractive errors can be corrected in multiple ways. When the errors are in a smaller range or mild range, then we can correct by giving glasses, or sometimes yes, contact lenses help if it is a soft contact lens, patients are more comfortable. Errors become slightly more or irregular corneas are more, then patients need to be put on rigid contact lenses. But when they are severe or when they are associated with other corneal disorders like keratoconus or corneal degenerations such as pellucid , then these conditions become very progressive, they turn intio pathological conditions. These conditions, yes, needs to be observed. Correction either with glasses or contact lenses, or by any means of surgery, the results are not very good. The patients can have still distorted vision even with treatment. Sometimes the astigmatism can come as a single entity or it can come in combination with myopia or hypermetropia.