Therapeutic contact lens use yields improved vision in patients with TED

Therapeutic contact lenses, including soft and scleral lenses, were associated with visual improvement in a study of patients with thyroid eye disease (TED), according to a presentation at ARVO 2021.

In the study, researchers set out to describe the visual outcomes and characteristics of patients with TED who underwent therapeutic contact lens use at a tertiary care center between July 2015 and July 2020. Demographics, history of orbital decompression, eyelid/orbital surgery, orbital radiation, clinical findings, visual acuity, and contact lens parameters were recorded. Snellen visual acuities were converted to LogMAR for analysis.

The study included 14 patients. About one-third of the patients had undergone orbital decompression surgery and 3 had non-healing corneal epithelial defects. Clinical findings in these patients included punctate keratitis, eyelid retraction, bulbar conjunctival injection, corneal scarring, and corneal thinning and steepening consistent with keratoconus. Seven patients were fitted with soft lenses, 1 with corneal gas permeable lenses, 1 with hybrid and 5 with scleral lenses. Vision in the right eye improved from baseline mean LogMAR 0.41 to 0.07 with contact lenses. One left eye was limited to light perception. The other eyes improved from mean baseline LogMAR 0.55 to 0.065 with contact lenses.

Reference
Strauss A, et al. Therapeutic contact lens use in patients with thyroid eye disease at a tertiary care center. Presented at: ARVO 2021.