Orthokeratology - Eye correction

[Steve Lindsay]

Check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthokeratology They are contacts you sleep with at night and during the day you can see without contacts or glasses. I have been trying this for a week. So far I am very happy. In dim light I'm seeing some ghosting but it isn't all that bad. As the flattened area on the cornea gets larger over time the ghosting is suppose to get better. The ghosting happens because my pupils enlarge larger than the flattened corrected area on the corneas.
Here is more info about:
http://www.ortho-k.net/
http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/orthok.htm
My eyes were around -5.50 and my left also had -1.25 of astigmatism.


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[Andrew Ovalles]

Does this permanently correct the eye over time? If so how long does one have to do this for?

I see this method being cheaper than lasik... and less risky.

[Steve Lindsay]

It isn't permanent. You can stop and your eyes will go back to what they were. You can also easily change your correction later if needed.

The first night after sleeping with them, in the morning my eyes were around -1 in left and -0.5 in right. By late afternoon they had changed back to I'd guess -2. The next day they lasted longer. A week into it I'd guess by the end of the day they are around -.5 to -1. After wearing them for a month or more they should hold shape all through the day and possibly two days. The ghosting was worse the first two days compared to now.

[mrthe]

is a great news i haven't see talk about that heare in spain , and one question can give some problems if you use this type of lens for years or are like the normals contact lens?

[Steve Lindsay]

I'm told that using them for years isn't supposed to give any problems. The inside front of the contact has a flat plateau corresponding to what you need for correcting. The inside front of the lens doesn't actually touch the cornea. It uses tears or saline solution to reshape the cornea. I fill the lens up with saline solution and put the contacts on with my head pointing down; if I don't an air bubble will get trapped in the contact. With the contact filled up with liquid and then put on, air won't get caught under that front part of the lens.

They are a larger diameter than an rgp lens but smaller than soft contacts. You can see well while they are in your eyes and feel similar to rgp lenses.

[KeithPedersen]

I did this years ago in the 80s and I used hard contact lenses to correct the eye. Once I stopped using the lenses my eyes returned to needing glasses over time.
Was painful wearing hard contacts during the process. Now Im just sticking to glasses, I have asked a few people who had laser surgery how they were doing and most have had to wear reading glasses to see up close.

[Steve Lindsay]

Hi Keith, I tried wearing hard contacts in the 80s too but not the cornea shaping like you did. My eye doc talked about the shaping was done early on when hard contacts first came out but with not good success or at least hit and miss. Evidently they now have better machines to measure and map the cornea to make the contact. I read there are two companies that received FDA approval for the new process for it in 2002 and 2004.

I'm only a week into this but so far so good and I'm happy.

Hey, found this:
http://www.heightseyecenter.net/nons...orrection-gvss

Attempts to re-shape the cornea have been tried since contact lenses were first fit. The process used to be called orthokeratology. This process would often take over a year to complete and the results were not nearly as favorable as GVSS. For this reason, many doctors and patients elected not to participate in orthokeratology. With the newer diagnostic technology used to measure the corneal shape and the newer materials being used for vision retainers, GVSS is now a viable alternative for many nearsighted or astigmatism patients.

[Gert]

Can you attach a barlow 0,5 to this stuff?