Touching stories like these will NEVER get old!
We saw a 21 year old boy with keratoconus yesterday for a contact lens fitting. I had originally seen him at my office in Arizona a few months back for an initial consultation, and his father has worked very hard the past few months to save up money for the contact lens fitting.
He had corneal crosslinking in both eyes, and he also has intacs (plastic rings placed into the cornea) in the left eye. His best corrected visual acuity was 20/200 in the right eye and 20/400+2 in the left eye. He complained of very blurry and distorted vision, along with ghosting and issues with glare.
We decided to fit him into the Ampleye scleral lens. With the 4200 sag on the right eye and 4400 sag on the left eye, we were able to achieve central clearance. Both lenses had excessive clearance, but instead of swapping out the lenses, I just consulted with the experts at Art Optical to adjust the vault.
With an over-refraction, he was able to achieve 20/20 vision in the right eye and 20/25 vision in the left eye! He was so amazed at how well he could see! His father was so happy that he started crying in the office. He told us "I just want my son to be able to see the stars." What an amazing Dad!
Such an incredible and heartwarming case. We are so grateful and honored to help these patients achieve their best vision through specialty contact lenses.
Thanks again to the Art Optical team with your help designing the lenses.
We also recommended that his family members get screened for keratoconus by using a simple in-office test to find out genetic risk for keratoconus. If we discover a sibling’s genetic risk factor is very low, we might only need to see them for an eye exam yearly. If we discover a sibling’s genetic risk factor is very high, we may consider seeing them more than once a year. This is a great test to help doctors manage keratoconus risk at a very high level.
