A REVOLUTIONARY NON-SURGICAL TECHNOLOGY, in which contact lenses are designed to safely and gradually reshape the curvature of the front surface of the eye to improve or eliminate nearsightedness (myopia).
Ortho-K lenses are rigid gas permeable contact lenses that are designed to be worn overnight while sleeping. While sleeping, the lenses gently reshape the front surface of the eye.
When removed in the morning, patients have clear vision without using glasses or contact lenses during waking hours!
Ortho-K treatment might be the perfect solution for patients who:
- Want a lens-free lifestyle during the day
- Find soft contacts too irritating
- Are too young for LASIK or are not a LASIK candidate
- Occupations or any jobs that require better visual acuity, such as pilots, police officers, firefighters, Paramedics, Emergency Medical Services.
- Patients who participate in sports.
Is Orthokeratology safe?
- Ortho-K lenses don’t actually touch your cornea. They are designed to float on a layer of your natural tears!
- This treatment can be used at any age and is completely reversible.
- Because the corneal reshaping effect is temporary, little risk is involved and you can stop at any time.
- When you begin to wear ortho-k lenses, you will likely have some awareness of the lenses on your eyes until you fall asleep. With time, the lenses typically become more comfortable immediately upon insertion.
How clear will my vision be with this treatment?
- Vision can improve over a few days or weeks.
- The best results are obtained for people with mild to moderate amounts of nearsightedness or astigmatism. Generally, ortho-k can correct up to -6.00 diopters of myopia, but the amount of refractive error that can be effectively managed with orthokeratology differs for every patient.
- With this treatment, the vast majority of people achieve dramatic improvements in their vision after the 1st night.
- Until your eyes are fully corrected, you might notice slightly blurred vision. We will give the option to be fitted with soft contact lenses to wear in the meantime if this is bothersome until you achieve full results.
What is the Ortho-k fitting process?
- Because the fitting of an Ortho-K lens depends mostly on the curvatures of the cornea, we will measure the cornea and it’s shape using an instrument called a corneal-scleral topographer. This is a painless procedure that takes less than a minute and provides a detailed map of the front surface of the eye.
- The next step is examining the eye using an instrument called a digital biomicroscope (a.k.a- a fancy microscope with a light source and camera!)
- We then custom design the lenses based on this and other measurements taken at the office. Some lenses will be designed together with the manufactures consultation team ensuring the best vision possible is achieved!
- Toward the end of the treatment, these lenses are only worn to maintain the vision correction.
- The amount of time that these lenses need to be worn differs for each patient. (This is why Ortho-K therapy is often referred to as a retainer lens.) Some patients only need to wear the lens for several hours a few times a week, but most require several hours every night.
How many appointments are needed?
Fitting ortho-k lenses is a more time-consuming process and requires more expertise than fitting regular contact lenses.
It requires a series of office visits and potentially multiple sets of lenses.
Patients need to be seen regularly to ensure that their lenses are fitting well and that their eyes are remaining healthy.
We will review all of these appointment details during the consultation. We want to make sure this is the right choice for you and that we are a good fit too!