At Yealy Eye Care, we pride ourselves on offering advanced solutions for patients with complex vision needs. Dr. Ryan Yealy specializes in fitting scleral lenses and Rose K2 lenses, providing tailored care to improve vision and comfort for patients with irregular corneas and other challenging eye conditions.
What Are Scleral Lenses and Rose K2 Lenses?
Scleral lenses are large-diameter gas-permeable lenses that rest on the sclera (the white part of the eye) and vault over the cornea. This design creates a smooth optical surface, which is beneficial for individuals with conditions like keratoconus, severe dry eye, and post-corneal transplant irregularities.
Benefits of scleral lenses include:
- Enhanced Comfort: The lens rests on the less sensitive sclera, reducing irritation and providing a more comfortable fit.
- Improved Vision: By creating a smooth refractive surface, scleral lenses can significantly enhance visual acuity for patients with irregular corneas.
- Stability: The larger size of scleral lenses ensures they stay securely in place, offering consistent vision correction throughout the day.
- Hydration: The vault created by scleral lenses maintains a reservoir of fluid between the lens and the cornea, providing continuous hydration and relief for patients with severe dry eye.
Rose K2 lenses are specially designed gas-permeable lenses with excellent vision correction for patients with keratoconus and other corneal irregularities. These lenses ensure optimal comfort and visual performance by being customized to fit the shape of each patient's cornea.
The benefits of Rose K2 lenses are:
- Exceptional Vision Correction: Designed to fit the irregular shape of keratoconus corneas, Rose K2 lenses provide clear vision.
- High Oxygen Permeability: These lenses allow maximum oxygen transmission to the cornea, promoting corneal health.
- Customized Fit: Each Rose K2 lens is tailored to the corneal measurements of the patient, ensuring a precise and comfortable fit.
Personalized Care with Dr. Ryan Yealy
Dr. Ryan Yealy provides personalized and comprehensive eye care. With extensive experience in fitting scleral and Rose K2 lenses, Dr. Yealy ensures each patient receives the most suitable and effective lens for their condition. He takes the time to understand your unique vision needs and conducts thorough evaluations to determine the best lens options.
Dr. Ryan Yealy shares some of his expertise with Rose K2 Lenses:
When patients wear Rose K2, what’s their experience like? Reports show that one out of five patients uses a soft contact lens and a Rose K2 lens to achieve visual comfort.
If patients abide by what we say when wearing their Rose K2 lenses, where they wear them for 4 to 6 weeks, as we asked, we don’t have too many problems with them. The trick to wearing Rose K2 lenses is the transition period of 4 to 6 weeks. Few are not happy with them, but overall, patients enjoy wearing Rose K2 lenses.
Rose K2 Lenses are custom-made hard contact lenses, but they don’t vault over the cornea like scleral lenses. So, how do they work?
Rose K2 lenses are smaller diameter lens that works with the abnormalities of the cornea, but the lenses still rest on the cornea versus the scleral lenses that vault over the cornea completely.
Some practices report that hard lenses can lead to corneal scarring. While that may be true for standard gas permeable, is it true that Rose K2 Lenses work differently?
Yes, they are far safer than a standard RGB. Now, corneal scarring depends on how progressive is a patient’s case of keratoconus. Keratoconus is a disease of progressive thinning, so the thinner the cornea gets, the more likely it’s gonna scar.
How do you monitor diseases like keratoconus with your specialty contact lens patients?
Yearly evaluations ensure the health of the cornea and that the contact lenses are working well. If the cornea gets too thin, I’ll send them to a corneal specialist. For example, a patient will need to see a corneal specialist for a potential penetrating keratoplasty or a corneal transplant when their cornea has thinned to around 120 microns, which is at its thinnest or incredibly thin.
Do you ever recommend people to go through the corneal crosslinking procedure?
Yes.
Do you find that when patients come to you for specialty contact lens fittings, they go through multiple fittings? Or, is it usually pretty quick? Or is it simply case by case?
It’s case by case. Some patients will get fitted on their first try, while others are a little bit more difficult and need multiple fittings. The scleral lenses are typically an easier fit than the Rose K2 lenses.
Does insurance cover any of the costs of these specialty lenses?
Coverage depends on the insurance. It’s not like a broad stroke where you can say all of them are covered by insurance. A patient’s coverage depends on what their insurance says.
We use scleral contact lenses and Rose K2 lenses to help all our patients achieve visual clarity. The range of affordability and guidance allows for greater flexibility for our patients.