Until a few years ago, we only had corneal transplants for people with keratoconus when glasses or contact lenses were not sufficient to give them good vision for as long as they needed to wear them to do their daily tasks. Now we have many new modalities. The new modalities are: 1. Collagen Corneal Cross linking, 2. Intacs, 3. ICL’s and 4. PRK, 5. DALK with the IntraLase. Cross linking will stop the progression of keratoconus in most cases. This can be combined with Intacs and these will help to reshape the cornea and improve the quality of the vision in about 80% of patients. Later, a small amount of cornea can be removed with the excimer laser and this often results in further improvement in vision. If the person still has a lot of near-sightedness or astigmatism, an ICL can be inserted. If however, the keratoconus is too far advanced, we can do a deep lamellar keratoplasty, to remove the thin part of the cornea and replace it with a normal donor.
While there are many more choices availble, we at YELC are able to offer the full range of treatments that are available for our keratoconus patients.