Keratoconus - What is it and how is it treated?

An explanation by Dr. Aleksic’s treatment centre optometrist, Rianda.
Dr. Zoran Aleksic FCS (SA) Ophth, is an eye surgeon and Ophthalmologist specialising in cataract and laser refractive surgery (Lasik / PRK laser refractive surgery for short sightedness, far sightedness and astigmatism). Dr. Aleksic’s treatment centre is located in Sea Point in Cape Town.
Dr. Zoran Aleksic and his team have long been recognised both in South Africa and the rest of the continent for providing high quality eye care with a full spectrum of treatments, from prescribing glasses and contact lenses to complex and delicate eye surgery using the latest technological equipment, all in a relaxed and professional environment.
Visit our website: www.eyesurgery.co.za
Transcript:
What is keratoconus?
I'm going to talk to you about an eye condition called keratoconus. Keratoconus is an irregular shaped cornea. If you think of the word, kerato refers to the cornea and conus means cone.
How will you know that you have keratoconus?
The most obvious process of how it gets discovered by the optometrist or ophthalmologist is if you have a high amount of astigmatism in the eye. Astigmatism is when the eyeball is not
completely spherical. If you think of half of a soccer ball, that's what your eye should look like and then compare it with half of a rugby ball. So, it's an irregular shaped cornea.
There are two types of astigmatism regular and as I mentioned irregular. Regular is when it's just the shape of the eye that is that is like a nice and uniform rugby ball. Irregular is when this side of the rugby ball is nice and regular, but this side is protruding so the surface of your cornea is not regular.
The optometrists will usually complain that it's difficult to test your eyes and that we can't get you to 100% even with the best corrective glasses. The reason for that is if you can imagine this is your cornea and you have crosses in front then the light hits your glasses and it goes
through your cornea but because the cornea is not regular it doesn't go through your cornea in a uniform way. It still distorts a little bit because of the shape of your cornea.
What we will do in order to confirm the diagnosis is there are certain signs the doctor can see
with his slit lamp or microscope. Then we will advise you to do what we call a Pentacam to measure the topography of your cornea
Even with the best corrected pair of glasses your vision and the quality of your vision will not be optimal. We need to kind of neutralize the shape of your eye and that we can do with either a hard contact lens or a scleral contact lens. I'm going to explain hard contact lens first. Now, you've got this irregular shaped cornea and you put a soft contact on. What happens? It just takes on the shape of your cornea and you still sit with this same irregularly shaped cornea now. If you if you take a hard contact lens it moulds the cornea so you are getting rid of that protrusion at the bottom your vision. Your quality of vision is much clearer because we are eliminating the fact that the bottom part is more forward than the top part.
Second is to do a scleral contact lens. Sclera refers to the white part of your eye; that means the actual edge of the lens rests on the white part of your eye which is the sclera and we
feel that we need to again neutralize the shape of your cornea. We fill the gaps in-between with a clear solution.