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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*.
Finally, an excuse to share a story from "back in the day".
I was a teenager delivering advertising circulars in Tulsa, and I stopped to chat (a frequent occurrence) with an old guy with cool gadgets in his garage. After a while, he showed me his favorite unsung invention... a tiny blade mounted on a circular track in a spherically-faced plastic housing.
He described for me how this device could be used to reshape the cornea -- make a shallow circular incision, and the eye would reshape itself. Voila, corrected vision without contacts or glasses!
But nobody was interested in his invention, he said.
Ten years later, radial keratotomy was all the rage... the only difference from the old man's method, really, was that the incisions were made radially instead of circularly.
And that was soon followed by any number of friggin'-laser-assisted procedures that all built on an idea I first heard about in the early '80s from a crazy old guy in a garage in Tulsa. I wonder if he's still around... I got the impression he wouldn't be bitter that his crazy idea turned into something big after all.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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.
The title is the short version.
My recommendations first and then maybe a short version of the story.
Schedule appts w/ a couple of doctors. I ended up seeing nearly 20 before I chose. You will learn alot about the process. Plus, if you have a stigmatism you get a cool 3d picture of exactly how it looks (mine was hourglass shaped)
Being a comp guy, I decided that the most important factor for me was to get the kewl laser. At my time it was the Visx S3. All teh doctors will tell you they have the coolest laser so do some research. The key points, as I recall, were that the laser tracked and pulsed 10k times/sec (so if I moved my eye it would adjust) and the width of the beam. My pupil was large so I needed a large laser to help minimize the potential for the halo effect at night.
Docs were charging anywere from 500 - 5000 / eye. I ended up w/ a guy at 1800 for both and was very happy. He was in teh same office (same equipment) as one of the 5000/eye guys.
I don't know how much the doc really does. Supposedly, he takes your measurements (perscription, stigmatism, corneal depth) and plugs them into some equation that is fed to the computer. Supposedly, coming up w/ the equation is the "artful" part.
The actual procedure was daunting but fairly painless. I got to the waiting room and spent a few minutes after check in telling myself how stupid I was to be fucking w/ my sight. Glasses aren't so bad, better than being blind, etc...
I was called in and they did the final bits of tests, the long one was to test peripheral vision.
After all the tests they gave me some valium and told me to relax for a bit. About 1/2 hour later, it was time to get zapped. I went into the room and layed down in the chair. they covered me up and gave me a small stuffed teddy bear. Seemed odd at the time but I was fairly glad I had it later. A TV screen above displayed a 27in close up view of my eye. My ex, watching from teh other room, snapped a pic (w/ flash) and got yelled at by the doctor. Then we began.
He administered a bunch of drops of various drugs. He puts a speculum kind of thing around my eye to keep my eyelids out of the way. Then, he brought out the cutter (don't remember the technical term, i would proably opt for the laser version now, they were too new when I did it). He warns me that I am giong to feel some pressure and then my vision is giong to either blur or go out completely. This is basically what glaucoma is I guess. Sure enough, I felt some pressure and bang! complete blackness in that eye. (i think my other eye was covered at this point. i was much more worried about the eye w/ the speculum though so I don't recall) The cutting tool is built into the "pressure giver". I hear a whir and feel a blade go around my eye in a circle. I was anestitized (sp?) but not hurting is not the same as not feeling it. That was fairly scary (but not the worst part).
He pulled the cutter off and I could see the lights above again. My sight came back more or less instantly. Then he reached in w/ a tool and flipped the top of my cornea back. Everything went super blurry and my grip on teh bear tightened.
"Your only job for the next 45 seconds is to look at the red light and DON'T MOVE", ordered teh doc. I looked at the red light and resolved myself to completely immobility. I think the doc even held my head.
The laser made a loud "TAC-TAC-TAC-TAC" and a smell of burning cat drifted to my nostrils. This was definitely the scariest part. This went on for maybe 30 seconds.
A bunch more drops and then he flipped my cornea back down. Holy shit, I can see. I could already tell the lights above me were much clearer.
This whole procedure took maybe 3-4 minutes, max. Then we did teh other eye. I was out of there in less than 10 minutes.
They taped big swisscheesed plstic eyeshields to my face and sent me to a dark room to lie down. By this point, the adreline was definitely beating the valium b
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.