Corneal Surgery

Injured or diseased corneas can become cloudy, resulting in impaired vision. Depending on the severity of the impairment, treatments ranging from using specialized contact lenses to surgery may be needed to improve a patient’s sight. Even though most cornea infections or injuries heal themselves without medical treatment, you may experience certain symptoms during the healing process. These symptoms include:

• Pain
• Blurred vision
• Tearing
• Redness
• Extreme light sensitivity

Some corneal conditions do require treatment. Our board-certified eye surgeons and optometrists at Eye Medical Center of Fresno perform various corneal procedures such as:

Corneal Cross-Linking

Our eye doctors use this procedure, also called corneal collagen cross-linking or CXL, to halt bulging of the eye’s surface for patients diagnosed with keratoconus. View treatment options.

Corneal Transplants

A corneal transplant involves removing the central area of a patient’s cornea and replacing it with a donor’s cornea or an artificial cornea. A transplant may be recommended to treat keratoconus, but it’s also used for patients with scarring on the cornea caused by injury or infection and patients experiencing loss of vision due to cloudy corneas. Different transplant techniques are used to address specific conditions.

Several cornea transplant techniques exist. The specific technique used can be based on the whether your issues occur at the back part or front part of the cornea. These transplant procedures remove only the diseased tissue and provide faster healing, require fewer activity restrictions, and reduce the risk of later injury to the eye.

A full-thickness transplant procedure, called penetrating keratoplasty, involves removing the central two-thirds of the damaged cornea. The full visual recovery can take up to a year and patients must be careful to avoid injuring the eye for the rest of their lives.