Custom-made Soft Contact Lenses for Keratoconic Eyes

Filed in archive Diagnostics , Studies , Treatment on May 19, 2007

A rare condition of the eyes, suffered by about 1 in 2,000 people - keratoconic eyes - is a rare disabling condition wherein the eyes look more cone-shaped than round from the side.

The sufferer see halos and double and triple images and they can't wear glasses. And because of the very thin cornea around the apex in keratoconic eyes, laser vision correction is not a treatment option. Possible treatment options would be wearing hard contact lenses or in severe caser, a corneal transplant with a donored cornea.

Hard contact lenses might be the only nonsurgical treatment option. However, University of Rochester researchers have custom-made soft lenses for keratoconic eyes in collaboration with Bausch & Lomb that sets apart from conventional soft contact lenses that would have just conformed to the conical cornea shape.

The custom-designed lenses, on the other hand, have irregular front surface profiles designed to correct for specific aberrations of the cornea and crystalline lens. Keeping the lenses exactly in place is still a challenge, as blinking notoriously shifts contacts. The scientists used existing stabilizing techniques, such as making the lenses bottom-heavy, to coax them into correct orientation.

The custom designed techniques and the results of visual acuity tests have been described by the researchers in a paper published in April in Optics Letters.

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