What are scleral lenses?
Scleral lenses are a type of contact lens that you wear on your eyes. Unlike the more common soft contact lenses that mainly rest on the cornea of your eye, scleral lenses are larger and cover more of the eye
surface. They extend beyond the cornea and cover parts of the surrounding sclera (the white of your eye).

Scleral lenses are rigid gas-permeable (RGP) lenses, meaning they hold their shape, but oxygen can still pass through them. The center disk of the lens “vaults” (jumps) over the cornea and doesn’t touch the
corneal surface at all. The small gap between the cornea and the inner surface at the center of a scleral lens can hold saline or another liquid, which is there to cover your cornea.

Why are scleral lenses used?
We prescribe scleral lenses for many diseases. These include managing problems on the surface of your eye itself and eye symptoms from other conditions. And scleral lenses can sometimes correct vision in
ways that soft contact lenses can’t.

These characteristics of how scleral lenses work make them ideal for treating:

• Corneal diseases, especially corneal ectasia conditions like pellucid marginal degeneration and bulging or cone-shaped cornea (keratoconus).
• Severe refractive errors.
• Severe dry eye.
• Scarring or corneal damage from injuries.
• Disorders that affect your eyelid or the orbit of (the area surrounding) your eye.
• Conditions that require applying medication to your eye surface and keeping it there.