Weill Marchesani

Recently, on an ophthalmology forum, I found a discussion about Weill Marchesani syndrome. It is an interesting disease. The most obvious part of the syndrome is that patients are short and stubby. It is amazing that patients also have a “short stubby” lens in their eye! Weill Marchesani patients have a lens that is smaller and fatter than the lenses of people without the syndrome. A lens like that bends light more than is needed, so the eye naturally has a lot of power to bend light (the eye has a lot of “plus power”). To balance that out, the patients often need to wear glasses that have a lot of “minus power.” What’s even more interesting is that there is a wrinkle to this consideration of glasses. The smaller thicker lens sometimes dislocates and moves out of the path of light into the eye. If that happens, then the patient has to wear glasses with high “plus power” to make up for the missing lens!