UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

Hi everybody
I'm Alli . I'm a new member in this forum
I'm 22 male form syria and I have KC
the first diagnosis was at the age of 17
at that age , glasses were kind of not bad
couple years later I started to wear hard lenses and I had serious problems with them .
I couldn't stand putting them in my eyes I think that was due to the bad quality of lenses that are in here .
I changed my lenses about 3 or 4 times . But they didn't worked.
in 2006 I had an Intax procedure in the left eye .doctors told me it was a procedure to make me use glasses .
also It didn't worked with me the glasses weren't good and the lenses were more annoying .
in july 12 2009 I had cornea transplant in my right eye at that time I was graduated from college and I was nervous cause I had a surgery waiting so I didn't feel happy I was afraid from all the complications and I now still afraid and depressed cause my life with a poor sight is nothing to me.
now after 6 months from the surgery I can't see well in my right eye the sight is kind of dizzy but the colors are a bit better . in fact I can see better in the left eye that still has KC .
doctors tell me to wait for another 6 months till I remove the one running zigzag stitch .
for the last 3 years I didn't use any glasses or lenses or anything .
my sight is too weak to do anything . reading is a serious problem to me and I still can't find a work that fits me .
my experience with doctors made me not to trust them .

so please anyone with former experience would tell about the advantage of the running stitches (why my doctor used them ? , what make them better than separate stitches ?) and can I use glasses or some kind of lenses to improve the sight ? (although the astigmatism existed in my right eye and the intax & the KC in the left one) .

I will be very thankful

Hello Allie and welcome to the forum.
It sounds as though you've had a difficult KC journey, so well done on graduating from college despite all the problems!
Your doctors are right - you won't know what the final vision in the grafted eye will be until your stitch comes out. And it's very common not to have good vision at your stage of the graft. So it is a question of being patient - things will change. Some surgeons prefer to use a running stitch and some prefer individual stitches. I don't think there's any evidence to say way is better than the other. I had individual stitches in my first eye and a running stitch in the second - the result has been about the same.
You could certainly try seeing whether glasses might help the vision at this stage. But a word of warning - the prescription could well change over the next few months as the graft continues to settle down, and it's very likely to change when the stitch comes out. So if glasses do help now, you'd probably need to change them a few times to compensate for the changes in your vision.
Good luck and let us know how you get on.
Anne

Allie

Welcome to the forum and please do not give up: you are far too soon after surgery to know the final outcome.

As to the advantages of the running suture as opposed to separate ones, I am not sure. I had always thought it a matter of the personal preference of the surgeon. I had sixteen individual stitches in each of my eyes.

All the best

Andrew

This is what I was told about stitches;

Running stitch allows the cornea to settle more evenly without being pulled in any particular direction, the downside is that astigmatism that may be present due to the stitch can't be controlled during the healing process.

Single stitches allow for the astigmaitism that can result from a grfat to be better controlled during the healing process. The downside is that it is hard to maintain even tension throughout so the graft can be slight distorted when first sewn in.

Studies have been done and nothing conclusive came from them so the way the cornea is stitched is down to the preference of gthe consultant.

Healing takes 12 - 18 months, we all heal at different rates. The idea of any surgical intervention such at intacs or grafts is to provide a better corneal surface where by vision correction is easier which means glasses or contact lenses.

I did have glasses after about 9 months but everytime a stitch was removed I would have to wait a konth or two for the vision tos ettle before the glasses prescription was changed. This can prove expensive, I was luck as I was a student when I had my grafts so the lenses and frames were all free plus that was 20 years ago.

My vision was rubish until the stitches came out, but once they were all out and the cornea had had another 12 months to settle I was no longer needing any vision correction. It is mainly as a result of age that I have gradually gone back to glasses and now contact lenses. Now on one of the specialist soft lenses for KC which I find are far far better than any RGP I have had in the past.

There are a huge variety of lenses avaialable so if you need them post graft you may well find that you don't experience any of the problems you did pre graft.

All the best.

Gareth

Allie,

Hello and welcome to the forum! I am sorry that you have had such a bad time with your KC. Sadly it is a long waiting game when you are healing from a graft and everytime stitches are removed your vision changes. This really upset me as well following a graft with individual stitches. Five years on though and my vision has really improved with lenses! It is not perfect because of scarring which has always been there, but with lenses I can see four lines now when I saw just a light box before. It does take time so do be patient with it.

As others have said, you can get glasses to hopefully help you see at the minute, but the prescription would change once your stitch is removed.

Take care, love Claire X x X

thank you very much
Anne , Andrew , Gareth , Clarie thank you all
It's really encouraging , what you wrote was encouraging to me
It's really good to hear that there's only those 6 months to deal with after that long bad journey

thank you guys again and I'm glad to be here in this lovely forum

Allie