Can anyone Recomend an Optitician?

[Ian Anderson]

Hello all
Just found and joined today. Had a bit of a nose around and will spend some more time reading this website over the coming days.

About myself
I have KC and it is currently corrected with specs
I've tried all sorts of contact lenses and the irritation means after a week of trying I can manage about 15 minutes before my eyes close completely. Trials covered fard, gas permeable, soft, hard / soft piggyback etc and it always came back to the same thing - after a 1 - 2 week trial the period I could "see" with the lens reduced to about 15 minutes of agony and tears that put Niagra falls to shame!

Anyway a number of years ago I visited an optitian / opthalmologist in Bulawayo / Zimbabwe whilst on holiday (at that time I was attending Kingston Eye hospital for their trial and error attempts at hard lenses) and he stuck me on a machine that he said did "laser eye mapping" and it bacically used lasers to read the eye requirements for an optitian to fit Glasses.

The glasses were great and by using them as a starting point I have had a few loca optitians "fiddle" with the prescription and keem my sight fairly good.

However after 3 lots of fiddling I'm no longer convinced that the prescription is actually correct for my eyes and cannot locate anywhere in the UK that uses Laser Eye mapping to ascertain the correct prescription.

Perhaps someone on here can make a suggestion to a "known" source of good testing
I live on the outskirts of London - near Heathrow so close to home would be a good starting point!

Thanks in advance for any recomendations.

(by the way on my return from Zimbabwe I visited the Kingston Hospital again and waited 3 hours for the senior consultant, showed him the new glasses, he measured them, rechecked my eyes and said he could never have got to the prescription - I put the glasses back on and read "made in Hong Kong" on the bottom of the chart! He has heard of laser eye mapping but could not advise if anyone in the UK used such devices)

Ian

[Anne Klepacz]

Hi Ian and welcome to the forum!
Well there are some people who are intolerant to any kind of contact lens. But there are other contact lenses for KC you haven't yet tried, such as the special soft lenses now being made for KC (Kerasoft or Acuity Soft) and semi scleral or scleral lenses. Did you find the list of KC friendly optometrists in your browsing through the site? www.keratoconus-group.org.uk/optoms/index.php
Or you could ask your GP to refer you to one of the London hospitals which have a large contact lens department and see lots of people with KC such as Moorfields or St Thomas's.
Good luck
Anne