This was a fun case where we used a higher order aberration scleral lens (HOA) to help maximize a keratoconus patient's vision potential.
This patient suffers from keratoconus, a disease in which the cornea becomes thinner and steeper over time. Due to the change in corneal shape, patients often experience poor vision including blurry vision, distorted vision, double vision, problems with glare and haloes, and headaches.
Luckily, most keratoconus patients can be fit into a special type of contact lens, such as a scleral lens, to improve their vision.
This particular patient has 20/100 vision in the left eye. With a traditional scleral lens, he can achieve 20/30 vision, which is a huge improvement in vision. However, he still suffered from glare and haloes in that eye, especially at night.
In order to improve this, we decided to try a higher order aberration lens, called the Ovitz ARES lens.
First, we fit the patient into a diagnostic Valley Contax scleral lens. Then, they send us a lens with dots on it (see image).
We use a special machine to analyze the position of the dots, and that information gets sent to the laboratory. Next, the lab creates a higher order aberration (HOA) lens with special visual correction, custom to the patient's eye. You can see the lens now has no dots (see next image).
Lastly, we take scans of the lens again to see the improvement in the patient's vision. Notice the bar graph showing a large amount of improvement in the patient's HOA values!
This patient now sees 20/15 with his HOA scleral lens, and he is thrilled.
Thank you to Dr. Isaac Ortiz for referring this keratoconus patient to us.
