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Has Anyone Tried Corneal Reshaping?
bgraziano asks: "I'm looking into alternatives to LASIK and I'm investigating corneal reshaping. This involves wearing contact lenses at night to reshape my eyes to address nearsightedness and astigmatism. I've found lots of vendor sites but I can't find any first hand accounts from people going through the process. Has anyone tried this? Are you aware of any links to first hand accounts of people that have tried it?"
A nidghbor of mine is doing it, and he says the lenses are really uncomfortable. Seems to be working for him tho. *add salt here*.
Did a review of these. You can find their glowing review here http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,12 543,658680,00.html
My mom got to the point where she was having to wear contacts *and* glasses at the same time and started looking into ways to improve her vision. She went through two or three years of Precise Corneal Molding. She already wore hard contacts, so she didn't have any trouble adjusting to the molds. She had to go back to the optometrist pretty often to get progress checked and to get new molds. After about three years, her vision has improved dramatically, though not to 20-20.
Given her experience, I think it would certainly be worth a try. She had no trouble with the molds, she stuck to the prescribed treatment, and she got vastly improved vision with no lasers or other invasive procedures. Don't know what more you could ask.
The only problem I know if, is the results dont last, this is why you need to correct every night. But it does work.
This is one of the reasons I just put with glasses, I don't want to chance my eye-sight with nightvision problems with lasik. And I dont want to wear corrective lenses at night while I sleep.
This is commonly referred to as orthokeratology. The FDA just approved a form of this called CRT, or corneal refractive therapy. Note that the procedure is not that new, it is the FDA approval that is new. You can search pubmed to find relevant literature on these techniques(searching for "orthokeratology" will provide you with plenty of results).
Sorry, but the radial keratotomy method was developed back in the 50´s by a Colombian (yes, Colombian-Spaniard) doctor called Mr. Barraquer.
His history is very interesting... he funded "Clínica Barraquer", a leader institution in eye surgery research...
Corneal reshaping (popularly, Ortho-k) is a temporary fix, and in my experience, a very painful fix. Special hard contact lenses are produced that literally mold your eyeball into a shape that compensates for specific deficits in your visual acuity. It can address myopia and farsightedness, but not astigmatism.
I underwent ortho-k 25 years ago in order to pass a flight physical for the USAF. It brought my eyes to 20/20 and kept them there for 30 days. USAF regs require removal of contacts 30 days prior to a flight physical. Once you pass the physical and get trained, it doesn't matter if your visual acuity eventually goes south -- by the time you are ready to strap on an F-15, they have too much invested in you to DQ you because of your bad eyesight. Cheaper to grind lenses for your O2 mask.
But, man I don't ever want to go through that again. I wore them every day for six months. I had a 5 minute reprieve every hour to lubricate my eyes. The pain was constant and non-trivial. Unless you are looking to become a commercial or military pilot, don't bother with Ortho-k. After I left the Air Force, I got LASIK, and I am hugely satisfied with it.
Here is my list of pros and cons from wearing them for 7 months
+ They actually give me perfect vision for most of the day.
+ No pain or surgeries.
+ Your vision can return to normal in about 2 weeks if you don't like them.
- I'm used to soft contacts, these felt like rocks at first. Even now they are uncomfortable to wear if I am active and about doing stuff.
- I sometimes sleep with my eyes open so these things dry to my eyeballs and it gets difficult to take them off in the morning, a few times I had to flush my eyes with contact solution for 15 minutes to loosen them up.
- At night, my vision fades a bit and I see halos around light sources , esp car headlights. Since the lenses don't cover the entire cornea, my periphial vision (everything else besides what I'm directly looking at gets a bit fuzzy) This is the suckiest thing about them.
- I've been to see my eye doctor many times since december for checkups. He has switched my lense prescriptions 3 times because the current pair wasn't a perfect fit anymore.
- Expensive
Despite all the negatives, I'd highly recommend the paragon CRT lenses for anyone who is considering lasik or who is fed up with regular contact lenses. The convenience of perfect vision during the day is way worth the price and hassle of fussing with contacts at night.
In my case, I sleep with my eyes open plus I get dry eyes when I wear contacts however 4 out of 5 days my vision is 20/20 or better. The other 1 out of 5 days my left or right eye is off a bit. Its annoying but I get used to it for a few hours and usually the eye somehow corrects itself in the early afternoon.