Contact Lens Experts
At our practice, we are dedicated to enhancing your quality of life through advanced contact lenses tailored to your needs. This is all we do. We understand your concerns, your needs, your condition, and how best to address them to improve your quality of life. We specialize in managing complex cases and are committed to providing personalized care and support to ensure the success of your treatment. Each lens is prescribed based on a thorough evaluation and meticulous revision process to ensure optimal outcomes. We have a vast array of cutting-edge technologies at our disposal, many that no other practitioners have access to, ensuring we have the tools to address your unique needs. Technology plays an important but only supporting role. What truly sets us apart is our unwavering compassion and tireless dedication to you. Our team possesses the experience, skills, and strategic approach necessary for your success.
What Contact Lenses Can Do For You:
- Restore your vision affected by corneal disease, dystrophy, trauma, or surgical complications
- Eliminate double vision
- Restore confidence lost from a disfigured eye
- Prevent myopia progression
- Stop the pain from severe dry eye and ocular surface disease
- Heal damaged ocular surface tissue
- Reduce the need for reading glasses
- Provide nonsurgical, glasses free vision
Experts in Contact Lenses
Dr. John D. Gelles is the director of our specialty contact lens division. He is renowned globally for his expertise in specialty contact lens design and corneal conditions. He graduated from the University of Oregon and earned his optometry degree from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. Dr. Gelles holds academic positions at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, SUNY College of Optometry, Illinois College of Optometry, and New England College of Optometry. He serves on the boards of the Contact Lens Society of America, the International Keratoconus Academy, and the Gas Permeable Lens Institute. A frequent lecturer and author, he has contributed extensively to the field of specialty contact lenses. His clinical work focuses on managing keratoconus, corneal diseases, ocular surface diseases, myopia, and postsurgical corneal conditions. Dr. Gelles is involved in clinical trials and consults for ophthalmic companies, developing new treatments and technologies. Recognized annually as a Top Doctor nominee by the National Keratoconus Foundation since 2017, he is the only BostonSight PROSE clinical fellow and EyePrintPro provider in New Jersey. Dr. Gelles’ expertise includes custom scleral lenses, PROSE devices, hybrid lenses, piggyback lens systems, corneal gas permeable lenses, and custom soft lenses. He continuously innovates to improve patient outcomes.
Needs We Address with Specialty Contact Lenses
Vision Restoration in Keratoconus and Corneal Conditions
Various corneal conditions such as keratoconus, corneal transplants, corneal surgery, surgical complications, and trauma can cause irregular corneal shapes, leading to overlapped or distorted vision that glasses cannot correct. Custom lenses improve vision by providing a smooth optical surface, enhancing the ability to perform everyday tasks. Wavefront Guided lenses minimize halos and glare, particularly at night, improving overall vision clarity. This can significantly enhance your quality of life by restoring clear vision, reducing visual disturbances, and enabling you to perform daily activities with ease and confidence.
Ocular Surface Disease Treatment
Ocular surface disease is a catchall term for diseases that damage the surface of the eye; dry eye being the most common. These conditions can cause pain, redness, irritation, burning, and gritty sensations. Specialized lenses alleviate these symptoms by acting as a bandage, providing continuous hydration and protection to the ocular surface, maintaining moisture, and reducing the need for frequent eye drops. PROSE treatment is frequently utilized and can restore vision and comfort by creating a new, smooth ocular surface and protecting the eye from further damage, allowing the tissue to heal under a PROSE device. This treatment improves ocular surface health, dramatically reduces discomfort, enhances visual clarity, and improves your overall eye health, thus greatly enhancing your daily life and productivity.
Double Vision (Diplopia) Correction
Prism contact lenses correct visual alignment issues, reducing or eliminating double vision, significantly enhancing the ability to read, drive, and work comfortably. Addressing diplopia improves depth perception and spatial awareness, making daily tasks safer and more manageable, thus significantly improving your quality of life. These can be especially helpful for those recovering from events that create double vision, such as head trauma, stroke, nerve palsy, and more.
Cosmetic Enhancements
Cosmetic lenses provide subtle to dramatic effects, allowing for experimentation with appearance and self-expression. For those with disfigured eyes, prosthetic lenses can boost self-esteem, confidence, and comfort in social interactions, positively impacting personal and professional life.
Light Sensitivity and Contrast Enhancement
Tinted lenses enhance contrast in specific environments, reducing glare and improving both performance and visual comfort across varying lighting conditions. For individuals with light sensitivity or light triggered migraines, these lenses provide significant relief. They are less noticeable indoors compared to traditional tinted glasses. Athletes, in particular, can benefit from improved performance. These lenses can also be made to mimic sunglasses while eliminating the restrictions posed by glasses during sports or other activities.
Myopia Management to Stop Progressive Nearsightedness
Rapidly worsening myopia in children can lead to future eye health complications. Specific myopia control contact lenses are designed to slow the progression of myopia in children and adolescents, reducing the risk of severe vision problems later in life while also keeping the prescription low and preserving options for permanent vision correction surgery in adulthood. By managing myopia effectively, these lenses help ensure better long term eye health, preserve vision quality, and reduce the potential need for more invasive treatments in the future, thereby safe guarding your child’s future quality of life.
Temporary Non Surgical Glasses and Contact Lens Free Vision Correction
Orthokeratology lenses reshape the cornea overnight, providing clear vision throughout the day without the need for glasses or daytime contact lenses. This nonsurgical approach is ideal for enhancing daily activities where contact lens wear is not ideal or safe. This allows you to enjoy a glass free lifestyle during the day, improving comfort, convenience, and the ability to engage in sports and other activities without the hindrance of visual aids.
Reading Glasses Replacement
Multifocal contact lenses provide clear vision at all distances, eliminating the need for multiple pairs of glasses. This simplifies the transition between near and far tasks, such as reading and driving, enhancing convenience and improving quality of life.
Replacement for Glasses
A variety of contact lenses offer a clear and comfortable alternative to glasses, allowing for freedom in daily activities and sports. They provide a glasses-free experience, enhancing comfort, aesthetics, and participation in physical activities without the limitations of traditional eyewear.
Types of Contact Lenses
- Scleral Lenses: Provide exceptional comfort and stability for patients with irregular corneas or severe dry eye conditions. They offer clear vision and improve ocular surface health, significantly enhancing visual quality and comfort.
- Custom Soft Lenses: Tailored to provide optimal comfort and vision, ensuring a personalized fit. These lenses offer a comfortable and effective solution for various vision needs.
- Eye Print Pro Devices: Allow for success in the most complex and extreme eye shapes, enabling those who would otherwise fail or be unable to be fitted with a lens to restore vision or protect and heal their eyes.
- PROSE Devices: Restore vision and provide significant relief for severe ocular surface diseases. This treatment dramatically improves visual function and comfort, enhancing daily life.
- Hybrid Lenses: Vision of gas permeable lenses but with enhanced comfort. These lenses incorporate a soft edge, aiding in lens centration and improving comfort compared to traditional RGP lenses.
- Corneal Gas Permeable Lenses: Also known as RGP lenses or hard lenses, these lenses offer crisp vision for various conditions, including astigmatism and presbyopia.
- Piggyback Lenses: Combine a soft lens beneath a gas permeable lens, offering enhanced comfort and vision for sensitive eyes.
- Bandage Soft Lenses: These lenses act like a bandage to cover the cornea while it heals. They protect and promote healing, reducing discomfort and improving ocular health.
- Orthokeratology Retainers: Similar to corneal gas permeable lenses, these retainers are worn overnight to reshape the cornea, providing temporary vision correction, allowing you to be glasses and contact lensfree during waking hours. They offer a nonsurgical option for daytime vision correction, improving convenience and lifestyle.
- Standard Soft Lenses: Available for the majority of normal corneal shapes and average prescription needs. These are typical soft lenses, providing reliable vision correction for everyday activities. These lenses offer a practical and comfortable vision correction solution for daily wear.
Special Lens Features to Enhance Performance
- Prism Contact Lenses: Correct visual alignment issues, reducing or eliminating double vision, significantly enhancing the ability to read, drive, and work comfortably. These can be added to soft lenses and scleral lenses, improving visual clarity and daily functionality.
- WavefrontGuided Scleral Lens Optics: Improve vision quality by further reducing glare and halos. These can be added to scleral lenses, enhancing visual clarity and comfort, especially in challenging lighting conditions.
- Multifocal Contact Lenses: Provide good vision at all distances, ideal for those struggling with presbyopia who want to eliminate their reading glasses. These can be added to all lenses, improving convenience and overall visual experience.
- Tinted Lenses: Enhance visual contrast, making it easier to see in bright light conditions. Additionally, they can be used to address light sensitivity, improving comfort and visual performance.
Special Lens Features to Enhance Appearance
- Prosthetic Lenses: Custom prosthetic lenses are hand painted and mask damaged or disfigured eyes, providing a natural look and boosting confidence and self esteem.
- Special Effects Contact Lenses: Allow for dramatic changes in eye appearance, perfect for stage, screen, and special events. These lenses provide creative options for enhancing eye appearance.
- Color Contact Lenses: These beauty lenses are used to alter the cosmetic appearance of the eye. Available on select standard soft lenses, they offer an option for personal expression and aesthetic enhancement.
Contact Lens and Device Design and Fitting Process
At the Cornea and Laser Eye Institute, patients undergo an advanced comprehensive ocular examination using sophisticated technologies to optimize results. Using this evaluation, your individual needs can be matched to the proper specialty contact lens to achieve the best outcome. This advanced ocular examination will typically take a few hours to complete. Once this baseline information is gathered, the lens design and fitting process can begin.
During your initial evaluation, the lens design process will begin. Just like a fingerprint, each eye has its own unique contour. There is even a significant difference in the shape when comparing the 2 eyes of the same individual. Specialty contact lenses are tailored to your individual eyes’ anatomy, physiology, and visual needs. From the lens materials, physical lens parameters, and optics, the process aims to determine and create lenses to achieve these three goals; improved vision, ample comfort, and optimum health. There are several techniques used in the process of designing your lenses.
Diagnostic Set Design
The classic way to fit and design specialty contact lenses is by using a diagnostic contact lens set. A series of lenses with varying curvatures are placed on the eye. The lens’s alignment is evaluated, and during the design process, modifications to the lenses are made based on the observations and eye performance. At the Cornea and Laser Eye Institute, our doctors have over 100 different diagnostic contact lens sets at their disposal. In contrast, the average practitioner may have 1 or 2 diagnostic sets.
Scan-Based Design
An additional approach is scan-based specialty contact lens design. Using highly specialized devices to scan the ocular shape, this data is used to create a digital model of the eye. Our doctors have access to all the devices capable of capturing this data, while the average
practitioner will not have access to these devices. Once this model is created, we will use specialized computer-aided design software to create a lens unique to your eye’s contour.
Corneal cross-sections from a tomographer, used to create a 3d model to build a custom scleral lens, ortho-k lens, or other specialty contact lens.
Impression-Based Design
An impression of the cornea and ocular surface. This ocular impression will be 3D scanned and used to create a model of the eye and then create a custom scleral lens, corneal gp lens or other specialty contact lens.
Another approach is the technique of ocular impressions. Using a specialized gel, an impression of your eye is obtained. This impression is then 3D scanned, creating a digital model of the eye. Using this model and highly specialized computer-aided design programs, completely bespoke lenses can be created. Our center has been a pioneer in this technique. The first to perform it in the northeastern United States and is the only doctor trained to do so in New Jersey. Less than 0.1% of practitioners worldwide are trained in this technique.
Once the initial visit is complete, your individualized specialty contact lenses will be fabricated. The lenses will typically take 2-3 weeks before they arrive in the office for the final verification process before being dispensed.
Once the lens parameters have been verified, the lenses can be dispensed at the application and removal training session. At this visit, patients are trained on safe methods for contact lens handling, application and removal of the lenses, and cleaning the lenses. Additionally, your prescribed specialty contact lens cleaning solutions routine will be reviewed. It is important only to use the prescribed solutions that have been selected for you based on your physiology and lens material properties. Other solutions may damage your eyes or lenses. Our doctors may change these solutions at subsequent visits to optimize physiology, comfort, and lens performance.
Once adequate technique and understanding of lens care have been demonstrated, you can take your new specialty contact lenses home.
A follow-up visit will take place after you’ve worn the lens for a few weeks. These visits are aimed at evaluating the performance of the lenses. If the lens design needs to be modified, another set of lenses will be fabricated, verified, and dispensed. Generally, more complex cases require more lens revisions.
Toward the end of the lens follow-up evaluations, highly customized optics may be utilized to improve your vision further. These optics may include blended optics to increase near reading capability or optics to correct for astigmatism to improve clarity. For those with irregular corneas or those with extraordinary vision requirements, the addition of wavefront guided higher order aberration correcting optics on scleral lenses can further improve your vision over traditional optics.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I learn how to apply, remove and care for my contact lenses?
Your understanding of application, removal, and care of the lenses is paramount to your success. To ensure you are successful we provide an in depth training session teaching you every aspect. These sessions can last 2 hours depending on your needs, we even offer multiple sessions to make sure you are comfortable and knowledgeable about the process. We will provide you with a travel case, application and removal tools, and solutions to get you started and all the information needed to keep you on track. We are here for you.
What is the best contact lenses?
There is no such thing as a universal best lens. The right lens will be different for each individual and will need to be customized to your needs. The best lens is the one that provides the best vision, good comfort during lens wear, and have minimal impact on your eye health.
Do I qualify for contact lenses?
The following is a non-exhaustive list of the conditions that we treat. If your issue is not listed, it is still possible that we can help you.
- Keratoconus
- Corneal transplants
- Radial Keratotomy
- Post-LASIK ectasia
- Pellucid marginal degeneration
- Keratoglobus
- Corneal dystrophies
- Surgical complications
- Double vision
- Migraines/light sensitivity
- Glare and halo
- Post lasik glare and halo
- Trauma
- Scarred corneas
- Exposure keratitis
- Neurotrophic keratitis
- Dry Eye Syndrome
- Sjogren’s Syndrome
- Ocular Graft vs. Host Disease
- Stevens Johnson Syndrome
- Immunological conditions
- Disfigured eyes
- Aphakia
- Presbyopia
- High astigmatism
- High prescriptions
Does insurance cover my contact lenses?
We believe in providing patients the best care possible, with compassion, expert doctors, thorough exams, ample time with your doctor, support from our team, and the most cutting edge technology, all to provide the best solutions for our patients. We are here to improve your quality of life. Due to the nature of our work, time spent, and technology leveraged, we cannot accept low insurance reimbursements. The reason we can provide such unmatched levels of care is that we do refuse vision or medical insurance. Insurances create limitations and constraints on the care we can provide. Working without those constraints allows us to provide the best possible care and access to cutting edge solutions. To aid in access to care, we offer 24 month interest free payment plans. For those whose contact lenses are a medical necessity, we will provide you with letters of medical necessity to assist with out of network reimbursement.
Are contact lenses safe?
To minimize complications from contact lens wear, proper care is essential. Wash your hands before handling your lenses. Avoid using water to clean or expose contact lenses to water. Disinfect lenses daily. Rub lenses with solution after removal to remove protein, lipid, and mucus buildup. Use only prescribed contact lens care solutions. Replace your lens case every 3 months. Always replace the contact lens solution before storing your lenses. Clean your lens case daily. Contact lenses are like sponges, they will soil over time and should be replaced at appropriate intervals. Do not overwear your contact lenses. Avoid sleeping in contact lenses unless instructed by your doctor.
Alternatives to contact lenses?
Contact lenses may not be the optimal solution for your needs. At your consultation we will explore all options to achieve the best outcome for you. Our team of specialists, ranging from doctors to surgeons, collaborates under one roof to provide all options with the singular goal of enhancing your life. Our commitment to you is to find the best treatment possible, contact lenses or otherwise.
