CAM360 with a collagen shield provides rapid epithelial healing with better tolerability and safety than when used with bandage contact lenses
Taylor Linaburg, MD, of OCLI Vision, spoke with Ophthalmology 360 at the 2026 ASCRS Annual Meeting about a study that found that use of cryopreserved amniotic membranes for ocular surface disease treatment can do well with the use of a collagen shield.
Taylor Linaburg, MD:
Hi, I’m Taylor Linaburg, MD. I am the current cornea, cataract, and refractive surgery fellow at OCLI Vision in Long Island. Today, I’m going to be talking to you about cryopreserved amniotic membranes used with either a bandage contact lens or a collagen shield. Ocular surface disease is everywhere. We see it every day in our clinics. It’s chronic, it’s frustrating, and it’s really common. When I look for whether a dry eye treatment is effective, I look for 2 different things.
One, I look for whether there’s corneal healing, and 2, I look for whether it provides symptom improvement from our patients. With that being said, cryopreserved amniotic membranes work for ocular surface disease treatment. This amniotic membrane is the only one designated by the FDA to be anti-inflammatory and anti-scarring. It’s been shown to improve the symptoms and signs of dry eye treatment with as little as 1 week of treatment and with sustained improvement to 3 months.
It’s the only amniotic membrane that’s been shown to provide corneal nerve regeneration and improved corneal sensation. The question really is not should we use CAM for treatment of our ocular surface disease, but rather when we use CAM to treat our ocular disease patients, what should we use to keep it on the eye? One, we have a bandage contact lens, and one we have a collagen shield.
Bandage contact lenses are meant to provide therapeutic improvement to the eye. They’re meant to keep dressings on the eye. But in clinical studies, we can’t ignore the fact that 3% to 5% of patients develop infiltrative keratitis who are bandaged contact lenses.
The literature on the collagen shields are lacking at this point. We wanted to develop a study that studied the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of collagen shields and bandage contact lenses when used with CAM. As a provider, I would like to minimize or completely decrease the risk of infiltrative keratitis. This is why we wanted to do this study. We performed a retrospective survey between June 2024 and December of 2024, asking physicians to use CAM, did they use it with either a bandaged contact lens or a collagen shield, and collected data along the lines of demographics, complications, and outcome data like healing, symptoms, vision, and other comorbidities.
There were 274 eyes that were treated with CAM with either a collagen shield or a bandage contact lens. The population that we saw was a typical dry eye population, with the average age being greater than 55 in 80% of patients, 95% of patients having a diagnosis of NK, dry eye syndrome, or SK, 18% having a diagnosis of glaucoma or diabetes.
The average wear time was similar between the 2 groups of about 2 to 3 days; 94% of patients had improvement in corneal healing and symptoms regardless of method of keeping the CAM on the eye. That’s either with a bandage contact lens or a collagen shield. But the real head-to-head came when we looked at bandage contact lens versus collagen shield. Compared to BCL eyes, a statistically significant number of collagen shield eyes had improved corneal healing, improved symptoms, and improved healing and symptoms together. Importantly, there was a higher incidence of epithelial defects, corneal infiltrates, corneal ulcers, and discomfort in those that wore bandage contact lenses as well.
But collagen shields are not completely benign; 1% of patients did know that they had some burning when they placed the collagen shield in the eye, and that’s likely due to the pH of the shield. The big takeaway is CAM works, regardless of method of how you put it on the eye. But when you look at CAM with a collagen shield versus a BCL, there is statistically significant improvement in healing and symptoms when using a collagen shield, as well as increased tolerability and efficacy. The big takeaway here is that BCL is a great way to keep CAM on the eye, but we need to stop defaulting to it, and we need to think of collagen shield as the primary delivery method of CAM.
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