While one of the rarer optical conditions, keratoconus is among those more likely to affect those in their teens and early twenties – those we tend to think of as having the best vision of their lives!

Keratoconus occurs when the cornea of your eyes grows thinner and thinner over time, possibly due to environmental or even hereditary influences. Regardless of the cause, this thinning can result in a cornea that bulges or grows misshapen. As you can imagine, the resulting impact on your vision is often blurred eyesight or the inability to truly focus on anything. Once keratoconus gets too severe, a cornea transplant is the only true solution for improved vision. These transplants, while effective and safe, can require recovery periods of up to a year for your eye to see at full strength again.

But when keratoconus is less advanced, there is an easier way to stop any further damage. Corneal Cross-linking (CXL, or sometimes just “cross-linking”), is a less invasive method that uses your existing cornea to repair itself and put a halt to the damage. It works by using ultraviolet light to create bonds within your cornea to reinforce the thinning parts, keeping its natural tension from causing the cornea to bulge or cone up in places. Think of cross-linking as putting rods in place to stretch out a circular piece of canvas, only the rods are see-through! The procedure is a painless way of restoring the firmness of your corneas for years of good sight to come.

The great news about CXL is that it’s the only currently available treatment that can put a stop to worsening vision due to keratoconus. But it’s also far less drastic than compared to a full cornea transplant, meaning minimal recovery time. Most patients enjoy pre-operation levels of vision within four weeks.

The Procedure

The procedure itself takes about 60-90 minutes at your ophthalmologist’s office, after which you can go home to recover. Your eyes will be numbed with eyedrops, and you can also receive a relaxant if you’d like. You’ll experience no pain and will simply need to look at a light while your doctor performs all the hard work of carefully removing your cornea’s outer layer to allow ultraviolet light to build new inner-cornea links, strengthening it to natural levels. To facilitate this process, they’ll add special eye drops from time to time. Post-op recovery may involve certain eyedrops to help your eyes mend but won’t require any changes in your lifestyle besides trying to avoid taxing your eyes too much with screens or bright lights.

Who Should Get CXL?

CXL is for anyone suffering currently from mild to moderate keratoconus – it’s a preventative procedure, not a remedial one. That means that any pre-existing damage suffered previously from keratoconus won’t be corrected by this operation, but any future damage will be halted. As a result, it’s a better choice the earlier keratoconus is detected – the sooner you have the CXL procedure, the more of your original vision will be protected.

A quick consultation with your eye doctor is all it takes to know if CXL makes sense for you – and if there are other corrective methods that might help compensate for any loss of vision. We can’t emphasize this enough: the sooner you have your vision checked by a professional, the more options you’ll have in stopping or even reversing vision loss.

Talk with your Vistar Eye Center doctor to help you explore whether CXL can prevent further vision loss in your eyes as well as learn more about other options if you feel your vision is decreasing. We’re here to put you at ease – and help you see all of life’s greatest moments.