History of Ortho-K
We have known for many years that contact lenses can affect the shaping of the cornea and consequently the final prescription of the eye.
The Chinese apparently tried sand bags on the eyes to squash the corneas into a flatter shape. But this wasn’t a satisfactory long term solution.
In the early years of Orthokeratology it was certainly more a case of trial and error, with copious amounts of time spent re-fitting lens after lens until the best vision correction was found.
Not only was this procedure very laborious as hundreds of different lens shapes had to be available for testing, but it was also very expensive on the lens banks and time allocated to their fitting.
This ruled out the availability to general practice and they were mainly fitted in the academic world.
Computer technology advanced, the academics made their years of fitting criteria available for programming and the modern computerised Topographer (corneal mapping device) was born.
Thanks to all their hard work in the early days of Ortho K, today’s fitting achieves a much faster level of accuracy. With incredibly precise computerized corneal mapping, computer generated lathes that can make a contact lens that exactly match the contours of your individual eyes:- we have the rebirth of the modern up to the minute optical correction modality, that is Ortho K.
At Spectrum Eyecare we have fully embraced this wonderful technology and we are ready to share it with you. Some of our own practitioners have taken advantage of this exciting vision correction and wear Ortho K themselves.
For further information, you are very welcome to contact us and we will be pleased to answer any of your questions.