Having issues with your vision can be a completely life changing experience, your ability to go about your daily activities, drive, walk to town, do your shopping, read and watch television, everything that can come so naturally can just as easily be taken away by an eye condition such as Keratoconus.
Keratoconus causes your cornea which is the primary muscle used for focussing in your eye and when the shape of your cornea becomes stretched and distorted from the effects of Keratoconus your vision becomes blurred.
The severity of the blurriness and distortion to your vision depends on the severity of the cornea’s change in shape. The normally round cornea becomes increasing stretched and increasingly cone shaped as the disease progresses, however, there is Keratoconus Treatment available to slow down or even halt the on-set of disruption to your vision.
Can I have laser eye surgery if I have Keratoconus?
There are two main treatments available to you if you have been diagnosed with the condition by an optician, and by consulting laser eye treatment specialists, they will be able to review which is best for your circumstances.
The first treatment is called cross-linking. This process is the combination of Riboflavin drops into the eye and a non-surgical UVA light treatment. Essentially the procedure is designed to strengthen the weakened cornea and to introduce a slowing or a complete halt to the corneas progressing distortion.
The riboflavin drops are placed in the affected eye and UV light is shone on the area for thirty minutes. This causes an interaction between the light and the drops which ultimately results in an improvement to your vision after approximately a 30 day recovery period.
The second Keratoconus Treatment available to you is called INTACS
This process is extremely fast and involves minor surgery to administer inserts into your cornea. These inserts a micro-thin but enable the cornea to be re-shaped to reduce the adverse effects of the misshapen cornea. What is truly unique about the INTACS treatment is the flexibility.
It can be completed in less than 30 minutes, with near instant results, and it is flexible enough so that should your vision continue to alter in the future, the surgery can be re-performed with alternatively shaped inserts.