How fast can my vision be corrected using OrthoK lenses?

How long does it take?

The amount of time for OrthoK overnight lenses to fully correct your vision will depend on your pre-treatment prescription as well as your individual eye shape. Other factors include quality and length of sleep each night (It is best to sleep for 8 hours), consistency in wearing the lenses regularly, flexibility of the eye surface, the cornea. Not to mention the lens design parameters, pupil size, presence of and amount of myopia and astigmatism to be corrected and the curvature of the eye surface. All of the factors mentioned above can vary from each individuals.

Our Practice

In our optometrist Singapore practice, all of our OrthoK patients have enjoyed significant improvement in their vision even after a night of lens wear. Typically, a patient with moderate level of myopia, e.g -3.00 dioptres of short-sightedness, will be corrected slightly more than 50% corrected the next morning. By the end of week 1, this patient will have about 90% of their prescription corrected. This will continue to improve further into the second week to achieve 6/6 vision.

Some patients may experience faster correction in their vision, and some may experience slower — this is common as each individual’s eyes behave differently. You may have heard of others who claim to achieve 6/6 vision after one night of OrthoK lens wear — while it is possible in some cases with low prescription. We prefer our patients to have a realistic expectation of their treatment progress and outcome.

As part of our OrthoK package for first time wearers, we can provide temporary optical aids with mild correction to help you see clearly during your first few weeks of OrthoK treatment. As the OrthoK treatment stabilizes with fully corrected vision, the need for these optical aids may not be necessary.

Individuals with astigmatism correction tend to take slightly longer time to reach the optimal vision. This is because OrthoK treatment involved with astigmatism is far more complex. Astigmatism is treated using toric OrthoK lenses. Some patients have astigmatism in one eye and not in the other, and these patients often find that vision correction using OrthoK treatment in the eye without astigmatism is quickly achieved.

High prescription of myopia (> -6.00D) will also take longer to achieve good visual outcome, as greater amount of flattening is required. Typically, it needs around 4 weeks to achieve 90% or 100% correction is our advice to patients with high myopia considering OrthoK lenses. During this initial phase when treatment effect is gradually stabilizing, we supply temporary soft contact lenses in steps of decreasing power to support the individual’s daytime vision. It is common for high prescription individual to experience some level of ghosting and halos around lights, in dim conditions in particular. This usually improves with time as OrthoK treatment effect stabilizes on the eye surfaces.

With even higher prescriptions of myopia (> -8.00D), it may be possible to correct vision to 6/6 with limit to lens design and biological limitations. When an individual may be left with a residual amount of myopia, (e.g -1.50D leftover with a correction of -6.50D with OrthoK for a -8.00D individual). This is commonly labeled as “partial correction”. Many high prescription patients are happy with a partial correction as it already reduces their dependency on glasses during the day. If they do need to see clearer, they can wear a mild correction pair of glasses during the day time when needed, compared to the usual thick and heavy glasses.

The progress of your OrthoK treatment is closely monitored using corneal topography measurements during each visit. In this patient, full correction with 6/6 vision is achieved at 1 week.