The cornea is your eye’s clear, protective outer layer. Every time we blink, tears are distributed across the cornea to keep the eye moist, help wounds heal, and protect against infection. However, the cornea can become dry if the properties of the eye's tears are deficient in any of these three layers:
(1) Lipid (oil) layer that keeps tears from evaporating too quickly,
(2) Aqueous layer that nourishes the cornea,
(3) Mucin layer that helps spread the aqueous layer across the eye to ensure that the eye remains wet.
The Dry Eye Exam evaluates the property of your eye's tears so that the optometrist can provide you advice on the appropriate choice of eye drop and treatment.
Keratoconus is a progressive eye disease in which the normally round cornea becomes thin and begins to bulge into a cone-like shape. This causes vision to become distorted and will require special contact lenses to restore the vision. IGARD offers a range of options for keratoconus sufferers, including scleral, mini-scleral, advanced hybrid, custom-made soft and specially designed hard GP lenses. Scleral, mini-scleral and specially designed hard lenses are the gold standard managing keratoconus. Additionally, hybrid lenses allows the crosslinking of the hard and soft materials together to provide the benefits of comfort, high oxygen permeability and crisp vision. These are now covalently bonded together through “HyperBond” junctions.
Prosthetics: Special contact lenses can be fitted to provide better cosmetic appearance to a disfigured eye. Disfigurement of an eye can be caused by injuries, eye diseases or infections. Other conditions include: an incomplete formation of the pupil (aniridia), lack of pigment or color in the eye (albinism) and damage to the cornea from trauma. These prosthetic lenses are designed to match the appearance of the unaffected eye as closely as possible and make the disfigured eye less conspicuous.
