Cornea Damage - Keratoconus - Assil Eye Institute Los Angeles

Dr. Kerry Assil: The outer lens of the eye, the one that's up against the environment, is called the cornea and the cornea can become damaged in lots of ways. One of the common ways it becomes damaged is contact lens abuse, wearing your contact lenses poorly and getting an infection. Trauma, car seats going off, getting punched in the eye or getting a sharp object at the eye. These all traumatize the cornea, the outer window of the eye. That tissue is very delicate tissue and it's very tissue. It's the only part of the body that is transparent. That's how it lets light in and that's how we're able to see the world.

And so when it becomes damaged in any way and loses its transparency, it can be devastating. Another common way that it becomes damaged is people doing it to themselves without realizing it, eye rubbing and knuckling your eyes. The cornea is only about a half of a millimeter thick. The cartilage in it is very frail compared to other parts of the body. And even though its resilient, it can stretch. And so rubbing your eyes a lot will eventually cause it to stretch so much and it a condition known as Keratoconus in your eyes that requires corneal transplantation. And we therefore will provide corneal transplants to these patients and they're required to use steroid eye drops for a very long time to prevent rejection of their transplants.

There's a lot of new technologies coming out surrounding corneal transplantation. But, for people who've had scars, either from viruses or bacterial infections, lacerations, and so forth, traditional corneal transplantation is still the only option.