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About 80% of patients with keratoconus suffer from dry eyes.

Keratoconus is a degenerative disease in which the cornea becomes cone-shaped. When the eye changes shape, it is more difficult for tears to spread over the entire eye, causing dry eyes.

Many people who have keratoconus and wear contact lenses will often complain about a cloudy film that builds up over the contact lenses which causes fluctuation of vision.   They may also experience itchiness and reduced comfort when wearing contacts.   

 

At 20/20 dry eye spa, we help keratoconus patients with the correct lenses and get relief by treating them for dry eyes.  Often our patients are pleasantly surprised to receive 2 to 3 lines of noticeable visual acuity improvement after treatment.

 

If you suffer from keratoconus, visit 20/20 Dry Eye Spa for an evaluation and begin a plan catered to your needs.

SUCCESS STORIES

Christopher Pontiga (Firmware engineer, age 37, Filipino)

 

Patient has been wearing scleral contacts for treatment of keratoconus since 2012.  In 2018, his vision was decreasing and he was having problems with an oily film developing on his lenses. He had to take the lenses off 3-4x/ day to clean off this film; this is a huge inconvenience as these lenses require more care than soft contact lenses.  Chris sees single vision with scleral lenses on.  When he wears glasses, he sees multiple images that are distorted because of the distortion he gets from the corneal disease, keratoconus, and cannot function well as his vision is at the level of legal blindness.  These specialty lenses are vital to his quality of life.  Chris did get treated with Miboflo and after each treatment, the film began to disappear and he was able to function again after he completed the treatment.  Maintenance is necessary to prevent the dry eyes from worsening.  Unfortunately, he didn't keep up with the daily maintenance, so his symptoms came back again a year and a half later.  Following his repeated treatment, he responded predictably great and is having good vision again.

Older man smiling at camera.

Rafael Ochoa (Carpenter, age 50, Hispanic)

 

His eyes were chronically red, and people thought he was drunk or high.  He was wearing hard lenses or RGP to see and complained about dry eyes.  He is a carpenter and does construction, so he is constantly around dust/debris which further irritates his eyes.  He was diagnosed with keratoconus in 2018, and he got his eyes examined to see if there were other options to improve his vision and dryness.  We fitted him with scleral contact lenses to improve his vision, and he was informed that he has severe dry eyes.  Scleral lenses are a treatment for dry eyes.  

 

Rafael’s vision improved with the scleral contact lens fitting and so did the redness of his eyes, but Rafael still had discomfort with wearing his lenses and had difficulty wearing lenses the full day.  Rafael still had MGD.  Once he decided to receive the Miboflo treatment, his redness and ability to wear lenses both improved.  He is now able to wear contacts all day, do his work with minimal irritation, and have minimal redness of his eyes.

Rafael was not following through with his daily maintenance, so he started to have symptoms of redness and irritation again. To help reduce this, he signed up for quarterly maintenance with Miboflo, which allowed him to wear contacts all day again, but his eye redness remained. He said, “People often thought I was drunk, high, or had an eye infection, because my eyes were so red”. This was just dry eyes due to inflammation.

 

The next step was to offer him the IPL (intense pulsed light) treatment to focus on the inflammation. Following his first visit, the redness of his eyes and dry eye symptoms dramatically reduced. As you can see in his picture, his eyes look normal again!

Simon Mohammed (HR, age 30, African American)

 

We have seen this patient from 2016, and he began being intolerant in wearing his scleral lenses in 2018.  He developed inflammation underneath his lids referred to giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC), which prohibits him from wearing lenses comfortably.  The dryness caused significant friction of the lens against the skin underneath his lids, resulting in large bumps underneath his lids that secreted mucus overnight.  He is legally blind in his right eye at 20/200 even with the specialty lenses; however, he can function better with the left eye.  This GPC condition generally requires medical treatment with eye drops and discontinuation of lenses.  Simon cannot see or function without these contact lenses so we recommended the Miboflo treatment.  He responded well to treatment.  The friction of the lens and lids reduced significantly to the point  Simon was able to wear the lenses for the full day again.  Not only was the GPC managed, his visual acuity improved 2 lines too!  He continues with quarterly treatments to prevent the inflammation from returning.  

Young hipster staring at reader

Right Treatment = Better Vision

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