FDA-approved fitting guide ensures custom ortho-K lens

Rochester, NY-An enhanced fitting guide approved recently for Bausch & Lomb's orthokeratology treatment (Vision Shaping Treatment) helps to fit patients with a custom lens that eliminates patients' need for daytime eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery.

The fitting guide, which the FDA approved in December, uses computer mapping and precise measurements to create the contact lens that is worn overnight to reshape the cornea temporarily, without surgery.

Winston Koo, OD, in private practice in Toronto, Ontario, said the fitting system-combined with better oxygen permeability and lens design-helps to make the treatment more successful than earlier incarnations.

"Corneal topography allows us to measure the cornea and design lenses accordingly, and gas permeability allows [patients] to wear them safely," he added.

Dr. Koo chooses his patients carefully -they must have -3 or -4 D hyperopia and only slight astigmatism to qualify- because proper fitting and follow-up care require six to eight appointments and the lenses are quite costly.

Also, proper hygiene might be more important with these lenses than any other, he said. However, careful selection has yielded good results and satisfied patients.

"Patients are pretty much amazed," Dr. Koo said. "They wake up the next morning and they're able to see well."

The FDA granted premarket approval in June to Euclid Systems Corp., which conducted clinical trials using Bausch & Lomb's Boston Equalens II brand gas-permeable lens material.

In other news, Bausch & Lomb is pledging to add about 100 permanent jobs for the production of PureVision contact lenses at its Rochester facility.

The same number of jobs was cut in 2002 after a federal judge ruled that the company had infringed on a patent owned by CIBA Vision for its Focus Night & Day lenses. Bausch & Lomb was blocked from manufacturing the lenses in the United States, and the company shifted manufacturing to its facility in Ireland while international sales continued. The two companies settled several lawsuits in July, allowing Bausch & Lomb to resume manufacturing in April.