People with Keratoconus often feel frustrated and disheartened because of their vision. Older style contact lenses don’t quite work right for anything but mild Keratoconus, and the new Scleral Lenses won’t do all they can do for a patient unless they are prescribed, designed and fitted properly. Our goal here at the California Keratoconus Center is to design lenses that help our patients almost forget that they even have Keratoconus so they can live a normal life. Our Advanced Technology for Non-Surgical Keratoconus Treatment is one of the keys to changing the lives of so many of our patients.

Advanced Technology for Non-Surgical Keratoconus Treatment

Keratoconus is an eye condition that results in a thinning and bulging cornea. In most cases, this thin and weak cornea shouldn’t be surgically altered because such surgery has historically been shown to weaken the cornea further. In fact, Radial Keratotomy used to be an accepted surgical treatment for Keratoconus, but these days we have treated many patients for Post-RK (and Post-LASIK) Ectasia whose vision had become progressively worse because of the surgery. For these reasons and many others, we recommend non-surgical Keratoconus Treatment whenever possible.

Here are the instruments and techniques we use to achieve amazing vision for our patients.

Marco OPD III

Our Marco OPD III gives us a wealth of information to help us design great lenses for our patients. We can see the cornea’s topography, how it is shaped, whether it is tilted one way or another, where it is high and where it is low. But one of the most exciting things about this instrument is that it can show us the wavefront optics.

Many Keratoconus patients see glare, halos, rings and other high-order aberrations that can interfere with day-to-day activities, such as seeing or driving at night. The Marco OPD III allows us to actually measure these high-order aberrations at their precise locations on the eye and design corrections for those aberrations right into the contact lens. When patients wear lenses designed with the help of the OPD III, the aberrations often seem to disappear immediately, allowing the patient to resume a normal lifestyle. This wavefront technology, combined with our other advanced technologies, is combined in new cutting-edge techniques practiced here and by very few other Optometrists or Ophthalmologists in the USA or the world.

Eaglet Eye Surface Profiler

The center point of our Advanced Technology for Non-Surgical Keratoconus Treatment is the Eaglet Eye Surface Profiler. The California Keratoconus Center has one of only 100 Eaglets worldwide and is among only 35 in the USA. It not only measures the complete cornea but almost all of the Sclera as well, up to 20mm. This gives us a 3d image of the shape of the eye with a precision of up to 350,000 points — about triple the precision of what older equipment can measure.

With this data, we then design a contact lens that perfectly matches the shape of the eye, resulting in the most comfortable contact lens ever. Combining the precision shape we get from the Eaglet with the wavefront optics from the OPD III results in the clearest vision with the lowest aberrations possible.

Zeiss OCT

Once we receive the custom-designed contact lens back from the lab, we will put it on your eye and look at it with our high-powered microscope and Zeiss OCT. Never before have we been able to scan right through a lens on the eye over 360 degrees around the eye and see a 3D image at any angle and any meridian. We’re able to watch how the back of that new lens follows the contour of the unusual cornea.

We can actually measure how well a new contact lens fits on the eye down to 1 micron. If something is not quite right, we’ll know it immediately, even if the patient doesn’t perceive it.

Comfortable Clear Vision with Keratoconus

But the great news is that, more often than not, things are just about perfect. We have a 52% First-Fit Success rate — as high as it has ever been — due to our advanced technology for non-surgical Keratoconus treatment and the techniques we have designed to use it. In the past, fitting Keratoconus contact lenses were often a hit-or-miss endeavor, sometimes resulting in five or more different pairs of lenses and five or more appointments in your eye doctor’s office. Now, more than half of our patients leave after their first visit with perfectly designed and fitting lenses. And our second fittings have an 85% success rate.

It’s not only our advanced technology and techniques that make this possible, but it’s our training and expertise as well. We use this advanced technology to treat our California Keratoconus Center patients, and we also teach other eye doctors how to effectively use some of these instruments to help them better treat their patients. We also collaborate on caring for patients when another eye doctor’s specialty is something other than Keratoconus.

If you have Keratoconus and would finally like to see clearly, comfortably and quickly, make an appointment here at the California Keratoconus Center. Our staff, led by the Center’s Director, Dr. Barry Leonard, are experts in diagnosing and treating Keratoconus. Please make an appointment online today or call us at 818-891-6711.