Fair 52° F

Home > Archive > Oct 11, 2007

Clear Vision: Remolding Vision Correction
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Imagine seeing clearly without the aid of glasses, contacts or surgery. The non-surgical remolding of the eye's cornea for improved vision – a process known as orthokeratology – has been around for more than a decade.
“It's out there – the public just doesn't know about it,” local optometrist Dr. Shaune Wallace said. “It's safe, it's FDA-approved. It's no more risky than wearing contact lenses.”
Wallace is the resident optometrist of the new Clear View Eye Care in Santa Clara, open since June. In addition to the extra-mile care he strives to provide, he said, he is also one of few local eye doctors offering “ortho-k” as an alternative to daily-worn corrective lenses or surgery for his patients.
“We take a picture of the eye, and, using custom software, we do a design that is called a reverse geometry,” Wallace said. “So what it does is this hard contact lens molds the eye during the night, so when they wake up in the morning, they remove the contact lens and enjoy clear vision through the day without glasses or contacts.”
Ortho-k patients wear these corrective lenses nightly while sleeping. Somewhat like a dental retainer, the lenses gradually change the shape of the cornea, Wallace said, and the results can be immediate.
“It creates somewhat of a 'wow' factor,” he said. “Somebody wakes up in the morning, takes them off and can suddenly see. It has that same 'wow factor' that LASIK does.”
Ortho-k isn't a new concept. The basic idea has been around since the late 1980s, though the computerized fitting procedures that made it more widely accessible weren't developed until the 1990s. The process didn't receive approval from the FDA until 2002, according to the FDA's Web site, and various ortho-k lenses and technologies have since been approved for overnight corneal correction.
Discomfort is rarely an issue with the ortho-k lenses, Wallace said, as they are worn while the patient sleeps; and unlike surgery, corneal molding is reversible, so if patients discontinue the use of their corrective contacts, the cornea will eventually return to its former shape.
Prime candidates for ortho-k are kids and teens who aren't yet old enough for LASIK surgery, Wallace said. Ortho-k may be very attractive, for example, to a student athlete who is seeking clearer vision but doesn't want to wear glasses or contacts during the day. Ortho-k is also ideal for patients nearing their 40s, he said, which is typically the age that individuals begin having trouble with reading.
“That's about the time when they have enough disposable income to afford LASIK but then run into the trouble of starting to need reading glasses,” Wallace said. “The neat thing about corneal molding being something that's not permanent is we can make specific adjustments as that ability to focus disappears over the next 10 years – we can adjust things to give them good distance and near vision all the way through that.”
Though particularly popular among those two age groups, ortho-k is an option for patients of any age, he said. The main draw for patients in their 20s or 30s would be that ortho-k can correct their vision non-surgically.
Ortho-k primarily corrects near-sightedness but can also treat far-sightedness and astigmatism, depending on the severity, Wallace said. It isn't an inexpensive treatment, but it is about half the cost of LASIK surgery, he said, and Clear View Eye Care offers interest-free payment options for customers.
The ortho-k corrective lenses are designed to last up to two years before needing replacement, he said, though ortho-k patients should, ideally, visit their optometrist yearly.
Another feature of Clear View Eye Care, in addition to the ortho-k technology employed by Wallace, is his personal, one-on-one attention and care for each customer who comes in, his wife, Courtney Wallace, said. He spends a great deal of time with each patient to ensure their proper treatment and care, and in addition to the eye exam, Shaune Wallace checks the blood sugar and blood pressure levels of each patient he sees.
“Diabetes is the leading cause of new blindness in the United States,” he said. “People can go undiagnosed for a long time.
“We also check blood pressure on everyone. They call hypertension 'the silent killer,' and diabetes and high blood pressure can wreak havoc – the blood vessels can leak, and people can go blind from it, so we like to check everyone.”
Clear Vision also offers vision therapy for kids with eye teaming, tracking and focusing problems, he said, and he will teach the young patients various exercises to correct the problems.
Shaune Wallace is a cancer survivor, and the experience has made him especially attentive to his patients' overall health, he said.
He was attending optometry school at the time his symptoms began two years ago. He first saw a general practitioner to find out why one of his eyelids was swelling and why he was experiencing bloody noses. He was first treated for allergies, and when that didn't resolve the problem, he was given antibiotics for a sinus infection. Still his symptoms did not abate, so he finally visited an eye doctor. Upon examining him, the optometrist discovered a wrinkled retina in the affected eye and advised him to get an MRI. A tumor was discovered, and doctors were able to successfully treat it with chemotherapy and radiation.
As a result of his experience, Shaune Wallace said, he has become more particularly attuned to screening his patients for any sort of abnormalities that may be indicators of serious problems.
“It's something that I've become aware of. It changed my perspective, in that I'm more preventive in my care now,” he said. “You wouldn't think that a young man under 30 could have a tumor growing behind his eye – no history of smoking, drinking. I ate well – I didn't have any of the risk factors, and yet it happened. So when I practice, I look for those kinds of things. I realized that anyone can be affected.”
Shaune Wallace, his wife and their two children are St. George residents. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and attended Southern California College of Optometry.
Clear Vision Eye Care is located at 1100 Canyon View Dr., unit G, in Santa Clara. To contact Clear Vision, call 674-3502 or visit www.clrvue.com.

---