oh yes rub yourself on everything there meow meow meow meow show your butt to the camera
Nerns. that was nice okay so throughout my career as an eye doctor i have fit many people
in different types of contact lenses from soft daily contact lenses to the hard gas permeable
contact lenses all the way up to the huge scleral contacts that we fit for people with diseased eyes
like keratoconus and post surgical cases but one of the more common questions i get here on
this channel and across instagram and twitter is about ortho k contact lenses also known as
orthokeratology and these are some of the coolest lenses you've ever heard of so buckle yourselves
up because we're going to dive deep into orthokeratology and just some of the craziest
contacts you've ever seen let's take a look you want to get down that was cute good jump
hey what's up this is Dr Allen here from the Doctor eye health show helping you see your very
best now what if i was to tell you that there's a way that you could see clearly without wearing
glasses or contacts throughout the day note how i said throughout the day and we'll get to that
but what if i said there was also a way that we could slow down the rate of progression of your
child's nearsightedness you know the way that your kids glasses get worse and worse every single year
yeah there's a way that we can slow that down and we can do that with a little piece of plastic
here an ortho k contact lens, ortho-k is short for a term called orthokeratology which chances
are you've never heard that term so let me break it down for you ortho is derived from the latin
word meaning straight and then keratology is the science of altering the shape of the cornea that's
the clear front window surface to the eye so in short ortho k contact lenses is just a way of
using a contact lens to mold or sculpt the front surface of the eye so that you can see better now
the whole concept of orthokeratology has actually been around for quite some time with it being
said that people used to put weights and sandbags onto their eyelids and then they would notice that
some people would see better afterwards and i don't recommend that you try that
but if you've ever done a warm compress for the eyes whether it be for dry eyes or an eyelid style
you may have noticed that your vision is hazy or a little bit different for at least about 30 minutes
afterward and that's not just because oils are being released from the eyelids that's
true but in fact it's the cornea being morphed or warped by the pressure of that worm compress
it's essentially the same basic theory in fact the first time this was ever used in eye care was from
a french ophthalmologist of the name eugene kurt who noted that when he fit his patients with glass
contact lenses and it pushed on the eye they could see better afterwards now what i find so crazy
and cool about these contacts is that they're basically kind of the backwards contact lens where
a lot of time on this channel i have said that hey it's not good to wear your contact lenses to
bed at nighttime where these type of contacts are custom made and specifically designed to be worn
while you sleep that way you wear the contact lens at nighttime while you're sleeping it shapes and
molds the surface of your eye and then the next morning you take out the contact lens and then you
see clearly throughout the day so again it's kind of backwards wow you're really just going to stand
there like a gargoyle aren't you i love her anyway now the reason all of this works is because the
front part of the cornea the very front of it has cells called the epithelium it's about 50 microns
thick and this contact lens will push on that central epithelium and basically squeeze the fluid
from the center of the cornea out to farther edges and that kind of makes a plateau shape and that
makes the light that's entering your eye focus more correctly onto the retina in the back of
the eye giving you better vision the catch to all this is that the central cornea does reform and
kind of spring back to its original shape which requires you to wear these types of ortho k lenses
at night time every single night in fact it takes about one to two weeks of wearing them every night
just to get the eye to be about the shape that it needs to be in order to see your very best
and then you also need to keep wearing the lenses every night otherwise if you don't the surface
of the eye will kind of regress back to its original shape and you won't see as clearly again
it basically just goes back to what your vision was like before you started wearing
these type of contacts so who makes a good candidate for ortho k lenses certainly
not Zelda here but anybody who doesn't really like to wear glasses or contact lenses throughout
the day maybe an athlete for example maybe if you're not a good candidate for something like
lasik eye surgery or maybe you have bad dry eyes and can't wear contacts throughout the day either
then perhaps you might be a good candidate for it now there are different brands of ortho k contact
lenses at least the ones that i am certified in that i'm familiar with those lenses are approved
for people up to minus six diopters of power with up to minus 1.75 diopters of astigmatism
correction so unfortunately if you do have a really unique prescription in your glasses or
contacts or you have a really high power these still may not be an option for you but it's
still something to ask your doctor about and you know who else makes a really excellent candidate
for these types of lenses those are children and that's because studies have shown that using these
types of lenses they can slow down the rate of their progression to nearsightedness by almost up
to 50 percent now the exact way that this happens is a really complex scientific discussion so i'm
gonna save that for another video but because ortho k lenses can have this extra benefit of
slowing down how thick kids glasses can get that's why so many eye doctors are kind of jumping into
this because it is a way that we can slow down their glasses of getting worse and help prevent
future disease and even blindness for people and that whole study of trying to slow down
or prevent myopia from getting worse is called either myopia control or myopia management and
i do plan to cover a lot more videos on that topic so definitely keep an eye out for that but let me
know in the comments have you heard of ortho k lenses before is this a completely new thing for
you or have you worn them yourself have a good success let us know in the comments about that
chances are if you haven't heard of ortho k lenses that's okay not every eye doctor does fittings for
these type of lenses in fact i had to go through a special extra certification course just to be
able to prescribe and fit these lenses but it is something that is becoming more popular and more
eye doctors are getting into it and starting to offer it through their clinics but again if you
are somebody who's looking for an alternative to wearing glasses and contacts throughout the day
maybe you're not a good candidate for lasik or other forms of refractive surgery maybe you're
scared of doing surgery or perhaps high amounts of nearsightedness or myopia runs in your family
and you just want to know what other options there are to helping your kids out then i definitely
recommend to look into something like orthokeratology and you can always ask your eye
doctor about if if they offer that be sure to tell them Dr Eye Health sent you hey i hope you enjoyed
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