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Conductive Keratoplasty (CK) is a type of refractive surgery that changes the way your eyes react to incoming light. It uses radio waves to correct mild and moderate farsightedness.

What is Farsightedness (Hyperopia)?

If you can see distant things clearly but near objects look blurry without glasses or contacts, you are farsighted (hyperopic). The cornea (clear front part) is too flat. Or stated another way: your eyes are too short (front to back) for the refractive power they have. In other words, the cornea and lens are not able to bend incoming light sharply enough to make it focus on the retina at the back of the eye.

Instead, the light is focusing behind the retina, or would be if it could travel through that dense tissue. So images on the retina are blurry when the object is nearby. Distant objects look clear because the light from them does not need to be bent so sharply.

Many individuals do not realize they are farsighted until they become adults, although farsightedness can occur in children. It affects approximately 62 percent of people over the age of 40.

Understanding Presbyopia

How presbyopia happens is not fully understood and there are several theories. The main theory is that as we age the lens becomes stiffer and less able to steepen its curvature. So the individual’s ability to focus on near objects lessens and they look blurry but far objects remain clear. Conductive keratoplasty is used to treat presbyopia.

The Conductive Keratoplasty Procedure

CK requires anesthetic eyedrops and causes little to no pain or discomfort. There are no incisions and no corneal tissue is removed. A tiny probe with a very fine needle tip transmits radio waves that apply heat to peripheral areas of the cornea in a pattern of spots.

As the spots heal, they shrink and gently tighten. The act like a tightening belt on the cornea and give it a steeper curvature. The cornea can now bend light more sharply to focus it on the retina.

Vision improvement with CK is virtually instantaneous, although additional treatment may be necessary at some later date, since the effects of CK are not necessarily permanent.

Good Candidates for Conductive Keratoplasty

Requirements for candidacy for conductive keratoplasty include:

• Being at least 18 years old
• Having healthy eyes
• Having a vision prescription that has been stable for at least one year
• Having vision within the correctable range for CK, which is -0.75 to -3.00 diopters of hyperopia

The best candidates for CK are people over 45 years of age who experience difficulty seeing objects and print that are less than two feet away and who have good distance vision without eyeglasses or contacts.

You may not qualify for CK if you:

• Have or have had an autoimmune disease
• Are pregnant or nursing
• Have an eye disease or an eye injury
• Take prescription medication that might affect corneal healing

For individuals who develop presbyopia after developing nearsightedness, LASIK may be a better option.

CK Risks

Complications are rare but can include:

• Seeing starbursts or halos around lights
• Hazy vision
• Double vision
• Light sensitivity
• Under- or over-correction
• Dry eyes
• Eye irritation
• Allergic reaction to the eyedrops
• Anisometropia: a condition that causes a difference in focusing ability of one eye over the other

Are you ready to discuss CK with an experienced ophthalmologist who can help you decide which procedure is right for you? A consultation would be the first step towards your sharp new vision.

In Seattle, Washington, schedule a consultation with Dr. Kent Leavitt at Bellevue Lasik and Cornea.