Different Types of Specialty Contact Lenses

A contact lens is a medical device that rests on the front of the eyes, bending light to help you see sharper without wearing glasses.

Contact lenses range from widely available conventional soft contact lenses to more custom solutions that offer a much sharper vision. Generally, the more irregular the surface of the eye is or the higher the prescription, the worse your vision will be with soft contact lenses.

How would you like to see during the day without contact lenses or glasses?

Orthokeratology (ortho-k) makes that possible with wearing custom personalized contact lenses at night! The process is reversible and is a great non-surgical alternative to LASIK and other refractive surgeries.

 

 

Scleral Lenses

If you have a very high refractive error (prescription), irregularly shaped cornea due to keratoconus or post-surgical cases, severe dry eyes, or you haven’t been able to achieve superior vision with a conventional contact lens, you would be a great candidate for a scleral contact lens. Scleral lenses are custom, highly breathable, larger GP lenses that rest on the white part of your eyes (sclera) instead of the center (cornea) which makes them more comfortable than a GP lens. The vision through a scleral lens in higher prescriptions is much sharper than a conventional soft contact lens. Scleral lenses can be customized to give you distance and near vision in any prescription and are also a great choice for athletes.

SynergEyes VS™

At Horizon Eye Care & Optical, we recommend SynergEyes VS™ scleral lens. These innovative scleral lens with a distinctive bi-tangential periphery is designed to accommodate a wide variety of corneal conditions. 

The lens completely vaults the cornea and limbus landing entirely on the sclera. The toric periphery of the lens may be precisely controlled in both the flat and steep meridians, aligning with the scleral for ease of landing and stability.

Contact us to find out more about Scleral Lenses.

 

Gas-Permeable (GP) Lenses

A GP lens is a smaller, firm lens that ‘floats’ on the surface of the eye that provides excellent vision. It is fit based on the precise curvature and measurement of the front surface of your eyes, your pupil size, your eyelid structure and overall size of your eyes. We can fit you into a single vision lens for nearsighted or farsighted vision. If you want the ability to see both (if you can’t due to presbyopia) a bifocal, trifocal, progressive lens option would be ideal.

Hybrid Lenses

A hybrid lens is a good option if you like the sharp vision a GP lens offers but don’t like the comfort of a GP lens. A hybrid lens is essentially a GP lens fused to a soft contact lens, which gives you a GP lens vision with better comfort. Hybrid lenses are more customizable than soft contact lenses but not as customizable as conventional GP or scleral lenses.

How would you like to see during the day without contact lenses or glasses? Ortho-k makes that possible with wearing gas permeable contact lenses at night! The process is reversible and a non-surgical alternative to LASIK and other refractive surgeries.

 

Ortho-K Lenses

Orthokeratology, commonly known as ortho-k, is a gentle non-surgical procedure where a custom designed type of rigid gas permeable contact lenses is used to reduce refractive error by reshaping the cornea. These lenses are custom fit based on the curvature of your child's eyes. These gas permable lenses are slept in overnight, when they gently reshape the front surface of the eyes. Upon waking, these lenses are removed and your child will be able to see clearly for the remainder of the day without any eyeglasses or daytime contact lenses. The lenses will need to be worn every night to have an effect the next day. If your child skips a night, their vision will be blurry the next day. Ortho-k is reversible and can be stopped at any time. While every contact lens has risks associated with it, ortho-k has been proven to be a safe treatment method.

Ortho-k is also used in athletes or adults who want to be free of daytime contact lenses and is not only restricted to myopia management treatments.

Ortho-k contact lenses are primarily used for vision correction in people with myopia, but they can also be used for far-sightedness as well as astigmatism.

Two ways Ortho-K helps:

1) To temporarily correct myopia so you don’t need contact lenses or glasses during the day. This is a great option for swimmers, certain athletes, and patients who are around dust or suffer from dry eyes, both of which make wearing soft or gas permeable contact lenses challenging.

2) To slow or decrease the rate of progression of childhood myopia. This is important as several studies have shown that ortho-k lenses can actually slow the rate of myopia in children. Many parents are concerned when their child’s eyeglass prescription continues to change year after year, ortho-k can be the solution. In addition, ortho-k is the number one choice for myopia management.

Our practice offers Ortho-k. 

Schedule an appointment with Drs. Alireza and Sana Somji to see if ortho-k is the right choice for you or your child.

 

Custom Soft Lens

When standard soft lenses do not meet your comfort or vision expectations, custom soft lenses are an obvious next choice. Standard contact lenses are only available with certain lens parameters. If your prescription falls outside of these parameters, custom lenses may be your only option. Another great feature about custom lenses is they can be manufactured with different shapes, sizes, and prescriptions. Since the lens is customizable to your exact prescription, the success rate is very high. Custom soft lenses may also be an option for patients suffering from keratoconus or corneal transplants. When gas permeable or scleral options do not work, custom soft lenses could be the answer.

For many years we used special daily disposable soft multifocal contact lenses off-label in children to help reduce progression of myopia. The studies continued to show promise and we now have an FDA approved lens (MiSight).

Dr. Sana and Dr. Somji are one of the few certified clinicians in the Sugar Land area to offer these lenses. The advantage of a soft contact lens over ortho-k is comfort. The downside is you need to wear the contact lenses during the day for up to 12 hours a day for 6 days a week, unlike ortho-k where you are free of daytime contacts. Currently these treatment soft contacts and ortho-k show almost equal efficacy and reducing the progression of myopia.

 Schedule an Appointment with us to learn more.