Contact Lense For Keratoconus
Certain vision conditions can disqualify you for glasses. There are even some vision conditions that can make it hard to use contacts. For example, if you have keratoconus, you will have limited options for what you can do to correct your vision. The type of contacts you use will depend on how bad your condition is.
What Is Keratoconus?
Keratoconus is similar to an astigmatism, but the shape of your eye will be different. With an astigmatism, your cornea will have an hourglass shape; with keratoconus, the bottom of the hourglass will be wider than the top. This shape creates unique challenges when trying to fit glasses or contact lenses to your eyes.
Glasses
If your eyes are just starting to go bad, you may be able to use glasses to correct your vision. One of the problems with keratoconus is that it is degenerative in nature, and as your condition worsens, the shape of your cornea will distort the light that enters your eye, and glasses will not correct for this distortion.
Soft Lenses
Soft lenses will lay against your eye and can thus help simulate the shape of a normal cornea. Soft lenses are often the next step after glasses. They will lay against your eye and as long as the shape of your eye is no too bad, they will retain a somewhat normal shape for your eye, but as the condition gets worse, soft lenses will bend with the surface of your eye and, thus, do little to improve your vision.
Hard Lenses
Hard lenses will hold their shape despite the shape of your cornea, and as tears build up behind them, they help to reduce light distortion. The one problem with hard lenses is that they tend to irritate your eye.
Combination Lenses
Some people will get used to having hard contacts on their eyes, but there are those who never get used to them. For these people, there are combination lenses. You have a hard center surrounded by a rim of soft material. Since the soft material is what actually sits against your eyes, combination lenses tend to be more comfortable than their hard cousins.
When you find out that you have keratoconus, you might think that you will just have to deal with less than optimal eyesight. But if you work with an optometrist who is used to dealing with keratoconus, you should be able to get at least close to 20/20 vision. Contact a doctor, like Jeffrey C. Fogt, OD, for more help.