Category Archives: Useful information

Keratoconus is a degenerative disease of the eyeball characterised by a thinning and deformation of the cornea into a cone shape. The cornea plays an essential role in the mechanism of vision, as it is the first medium through which light rays enter our eyes. Its unevenness deflects the rays away from the eye and vision will be distorted.

The disease can affect one or both eyes in 1 in 1000 people and generally starts in adolescence or after the age of 20. The causes are still unknown. But studies have shown that a combination of environmental factors (such as excessive eye rubbing, allergies), some genetic diseases (such as Down’s syndrome, Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) and a lack of important anchoring fibres that structurally stabilise the cornea can lead to keratoconus.

Early signs of keratoconus are blurred vision and the need for frequent diopter changes. Other symptoms include: increased sensitivity to light, difficulty driving at night, halos and glare around artificial light sources, eye fatigue, headaches. In more severe cases, vision can no longer be corrected with glasses or soft contact lenses. Astigmatism is often present.

For most keratoconus patients, the basic treatment is optical correction with rigid contact lenses. These do not take on the shape of the cornea like soft contact lenses and allow light rays to project more clearly onto the retina. The result is the regaining of visual acuity and slowing of disease progression.

Very useful is corneal crosslinking, indicated to slow or stop the progression of the disease. It is a non-invasive procedure that involves treating the eyes with riboflavin and vitamin B2 drops and exposing the cornea for 15-30 minutes to UV-A rays. The treatment induces natural collagen bonds in the corneal fibres to prevent them from weakening. This phenomenon also occurs naturally as the cornea ages, but the treatment accelerates this process and intensifies it.

The benefits are many:

• improves corneal qualities (strength, rigidity, biomechanical stability),
• prevents disease progression and further deterioration of vision,
• improves the wear of rigid contact lenses,
• postpones the need for corneal transplantation.

As there are no specific manifestations of the disease and all the symptoms presented can be associated with other eye problems, regular eye check-ups are recommended for a correct diagnosis.

Our advice: Don’t let keratoconus progress to the final stage! Because of the high degree of corneal thinning, surgery becomes more complicated, the healing period longer, the restoration of visual acuity slower.

By intervening in the early stages, up to 98% of visual acuity is restored, while avoiding the possibility of reaching the acute phase of keratoconus, where there is a risk of losing the eye as an organ.

Strabismus is an ocular disorder in which there is a deviation of an eye axis relative to the other. Most often it occurs in childhood, popular with the name of “cross-eyed”. This usually involves a lack of coordination between extraocular muscles that does not allow the focusing of both eyes at the same point in space and prevents good binocular vision. It may appear in one eye or both eyes.

Proper eye alignment is important to avoid double vision, correct depth perception, or to prevent eye sight loss. When the eyes are not aligned, the brain receives two different images. The weaker eye ceases after a while to send signals to the brain, resulting in amblyopia or lazy eyes.

Six muscles are responsible for controlling each eye. Ideally, the eyes work together to look in the same direction. When motion control problems occur, one of the eyes may move towards the nose, the tempus, the up or down. This eye movement may always occur, or only when the baby is tired, sick, if he or she has been focused on reading or computer for a long time. Sometimes only one eye “runs away”, sometimes it can alternate.

Strabismus can be caused by problems of the muscles, nerve-transmitting muscles, or the control center in the brain responsible for eye movements. It may also develop as a result of illness or trauma. Risk factors may include family history, vision problems involving large diopters for correction, or medical issues.

Children with strabismus can easily be diagnosed only by simply observing the position of the eyeball. Strabismus can occur in the first months after birth, in which case it is congenital, or around the age of 3, due to a large uncorrected hypermetropia.

Children with strabismus can complain about the following symptoms: blurred vision, eye fatigue, strong light sensitivity, double vision.

Treatment of strabismus should be started as soon as possible after diagnosis; the smaller the child, the better the chances of this affection being corrected. Treatment may include eyeglass wearing, the use of occlusion, medical treatment, eyeball exercises, botulinum toxin treatment, or surgical treatment.

Therefore, it is especially important that strabismus must be diagnosed in time so that the child’s vision develops to the maximum capacity and also in order to not affect the binocular vision. Following a thorough investigation, our optometrists will ensure that the little ones have eyes ready for school.

Orthokeratology is a method of night-time correction of myopia (with or without astigmatism) that results in clear vision throughout the day without the need for wearing glasses or contact lenses. This is done by wearing special lenses, which are applied to the eyes before bedtime and taken out in the morning immediately after waking

Also, Orthokeratology also has the effect of halting or slowing the progression of myopia that is particularly effective for children and adolescents.

That is why wearing these night lenses to correct myopia is the only safe procedure, accepted by ophthalmologists, to stop the progression of myopia in children.

Modern Orthokeratology uses gas-permeable contact lenses (i.e. allow Oxygen to pass through the lens) to effectively reduce mild and moderate myopia and especially to slow the progression of myopia in children and adolescents.

The Lens, carried during the night, remodel the cornea reversibly and so daytime vision is perfect.
The underlying principle in Orthokeratology:

Orthokeratology uses contact lenses with “inverse geometry”, which leads to mild flattening of the cornea, reducing the power of focusing the eye and thus reducing myopia. Since corneal flattening can be accurately controlled, it will lead to correct image focusing and will compensate for refractive errors. After the night lenses are removed from the eye in the morning, the cornea retains its flattened shape for much of the day or for the rest of the day. The Night Lens should be used every night to maintain flattening of the cornea, otherwise myopia will return to the pre-treatment level.

Applying Menicon Night Lens on the Eye and wearing it for several hours during the night shapes the cornea through the tear film
Advantages:

• the Corona Modeling is a totally reversible process in contrast to laser refractive surgery
• Freedom and perfect viewing quality throughout the day without glasses or contact lenses
• Decreases dramatically or even stops the progression of myopia in children and adolescents
• No allergies, no dry eyes or dust in the eyes especially when working in front of the computer
• The eye has perfect oxygenation during the night thanks to the revolutionary material from which the lens is produced
• It is the only Ortho-K lens in the world that allows the correction of astigmatism
• The right eye lens is pink and that for the blue left eye, so it’s easier to differentiate lenses and can be easily applied
• The effect is completely reversible when the night lens is no longer worn

In the past

The procedure was used in the early 1960s, when physicians noticed that the sight of some contact lenses had improved after wearing them. In Chinese history it was said that sandbags were placed in the eye at night in an effort to prevent myopia, although this was likely to cause glaucoma. Initially, only old fashioned materials (PMMA) were used.

In the present

Now, with the emergence of new generation polymers, computer-assisted lathes, and the technological advancement of procedures, it is possible to reduce myopia within a few days. This high tech version of Orthokeratology is known under several names. Among these are:

• Accelerated Orthokeratology
• Vision modeling treatment
• Corneal refractory therapy
• Corneal corrective lenses
• Gentle modeling of the vision

Children and adults

They can be treated by Orthokeratology because the principle of flattening the cornea is particularly effective. In fact, Orthokeratology can especially benefit children. Myopia control is used to slow down or stop the increase in the axial length of the eye, which occurs in growing children and becomes more short-lived with each year. This can result in a lower prescription, so the baby will not have to wear glasses that would be needed until he becomes a teenager.

Cornea

The cornea makes about two-thirds of the total eye power concentrate light on the retina at the back of the eye.
In the case of myopia, flattening the cornea at night by wearing the Night Lens makes the vision can be restored for a period of time (about 1 day or 10-12 hours).

This improvement is temporary; therefore these lenses should be used at night to maintain the therapeutic effect of reducing myopia. This flattening is accomplished by compressing the outer layer of the central cornea. The flattening value is about 6 microns for.