What we know about the scleral profile and its impact on contact lens fitting

ABSTRACT

Scleral contact lens fitting has provided practitioners with one of the earliest pieces of evidence that the sclera was more often asymmetric than symmetric. Some preliminary observations such as different haptic alignment patterns over the sclera in 360 degrees, the appearance of fogging in the fluid chamber and excessive tear out-in flow through specific meridians, quadrants, or areas of the haptic provide evidence of some scleral asymmetry. The advent of technologies that allowed measurement of the scleral profile led to formal research confirming that only about 6% of scleras are symmetric, while the rest are toric, quad-specific, or irregular. This has an evident impact on how to focus scleral lens fitting. Measuring the scleral profile also provided us with true ocular sagittal height data for cord diameters beyond the cornea. Although high variability was expected in pathological eyes, healthy eyes also showed a wide range of ocular sagittal heights. Due to this variability among healthy eyes, a discussion has emerged on whether the one-size-fits-all approach to soft lens fitting is a proper strategy to fit the whole spectrum of sagittal heights. The traditional mode of selecting the parameters for custom soft lenses through corneal parameters is also questioned.

KEYWORDS:

• Ocular sagittal height
• profilometry
• scleral asymmetry
• scleral contact lens
• scleral profile

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author David P. Piñero has been supported by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain within the program Ramón y Cajal, RYC-2016– 20,471.