Corneal Tissue Addition

I believe I have mentioned this before, but I just heard about a great patient story that made me want to bring it up again.

Keratoconus is a condition in which the cornea distorts out of shape and adopts more of a cone shape, which can cause the vision to really go haywire. One of the standard ways to try to help these patients see better is a hard contact lens.

In the case of this particular patient, he was becoming intolerant of the hard contact lens and couldn’t see that well out of it anyway. Then he had a surgery where external corneal tissue was added to his existing cornea to reshape it. As little as four days later, he could see so much better than he ever could with the hard contact lens! The improved vision totally changed his life, as he could now see well enough to get a job that he previously was unable to do due to the poor vision. Wow!