Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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 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