Keratoconus is a vision condition causing the structure of your cornea to slowly transform from round to cone shaped. Your cornea is a clear tissue over the front of each eye.
Keratoconus results in blurry vision and light sensitivity symptoms because the abnormal shape changes the way light enters your eye, causing it to focus incorrectly on the eye’s retina. As this health condition progresses, each eye may be affected to a different degree.
What causes keratoconus is unknown, but it’s believed to be related to a collagen defect, for which most of your cornea is made up of. Also, eye rubbing, allergies or Down syndrome may have some association as well.
Initial symptoms of keratoconus are typically slight blurry vision and increased light sensitivity. As your cornea bulges into a cone, it causes your vision to become more and more distorted.
Wearing a contact lens is the primary keratoconus treatment. In the early stage of keratoconus, wearing a soft lens may be enough to correct your blurry vision. Later on, a rigid gas permeable contact lens treatment will likely be required to ensure adequate vision correction. As your keratoconus worsens, the fit of the lens will need to be changed in order to avoid blurry vision. And wearing sunglasses and a hat helps reduce your discomfort from the light sensitivity symptom.
For many, a contact lens is sufficient. There are additional forms of keratoconus treatment for severe cases, including a corneal transplantation or INTACS, which inserts plastic segments into your cornea to flatten it.
If you suffer from keratoconus caused blurry vision and light sensitivity, then you should not have laser vision correction. And when you have allergy caused itchy eyes, don’t rub them.