Recurrent Corneal Erosion

Originally Posted by Freidi34

If you kindly could tell me what was the longest period you stayed with the Bandage contacts in.

The longest period I had my bandage lens in for was 1 month. They would not let me keep it in any longer than that, and would not change it at montly intervals either.

I also tried many techniques and managed to keep it completely under control by awakening with my eyes shut and massaging the eye lid, but this does not work when your alerter is going off at 2:00am and you have 4 minutes to get dressed and get to the fire station! This is why I decided to go along with the PTK and to be honest regretted it from the day I had it done. Maybe I will make a full recovery given time but I do not know. I will keep you all informed.

Maybe the sauna idea will work, I would be interested to hear about anyones findings or theories on this idea. To put it into perspective though, the hot house is around 750 farenheit, also there is air constantly blowing in your eyes from the to keep the screen of the face mask de-misted so maybe that has something to do with it? I was in the hot house for around 30 minutes a time 2-3 times a day, and the condition got better after the second day. I do not know if that helps anyone to find a solution? It would also be interesting to hear from any other firefighters to see if they have had similar findings.

Oh maybe it is also important to add that during the training I was drinking 2-3 gallons of water a day.

Thank you Noon really and Evie for youe kind replies. I will ask my doctor about the sauna idea... it seems interesting and we never know... this could be a new finding for a possible cure? Let's investigate.

Originally Posted by Freidi34

The doctor tells me that PTK is used as last resort for the RCE. He told me that if the problem comes back he would do a total scraping of the cornea with the diamond burr technique. Did you hear about that?
Freidi

Hi Freidi,

In general, doctors recommend what they are comfortable with, and don't recommend what they are not. This is a perfect example. A doctor who is not trained in laser surgery is not going to recommend it, because they will only know other techniques. Even if they are trained in it, if they don't OWN a laser machine, they make no money by doing laser surgery because they have to pay exhorbitant fees to rent machine time. It is probably THEIR last resort. "Last resort" makes is sound like a high-risk, high-failure rate procedure, when in fact the literature would say PTK is quite the opposite.

(This is not to knock diamond burr polishing - that is reported to work pretty well. I went with PTK because it was a more established and widespread technique at the time).

My own experience was that my doc wanted to try all kinds of other things before PTK, probably because she wasn't trained to do it. Ultimately, she did recommend it (and I should have pushed for it long before it came up, but this was back in 2000). When I went to the laser surgeon, of course, his immediate reaction was, "you should have gotten PTK ages ago - your case is severe." Why? Well, yes, it was severe, but also, laser surgery is what makes him money, and it's also what he's comfortable with. As an added bonus, it actually worked. (I still go to my original doc - I think she's great - even though I wish she'd recommended PTK earlier.)

Just some thoughts...

ebmd

Hi ebmd,


I think your comments make a lot of sense... I will take them into consideration and I might look for a third opinion regarding my RCE since this doctor is the second doctor I am seeing... the first treated me for almost 2 years and unfortunately I had no success and he was always reluctant about performing PTK. The current one is a corneal surgeon trained in Lasik (as far as I know, but I am not sure if he is trained in PTK???). Anyhow, he told me he believes in the total scraping of the cornea and told me he had very good results with his patients with the same condition.

Tks again and hang in there!

Freidi

Originally Posted by Freidi34

Anyhow, he told me he believes in the total scraping of the cornea and told me he had very good results with his patients with the same condition.
Freidi

Hi Freidi,

Just as a followup - I just want to make clear that I'm not saying that your doctor is wrong (sounds like you understood that, but wanted to make sure). He may have perfectly valid reasons for thinking that diamond polishing is better than PTK for your case. Depending on the severity, a less costly solution (to him and you) might work, and if he really has had good luck with diamond polishing... great!

I've just seen times that docs have their own way of treating things that's governed by their training, or insurance reasons. Not bad reasons - people do what they know within the limits (insurance) of the system - except that those treatment techniques might not work and need to be replaced with a different set of techniques. What I said about renting time on laser machines was from a few places, including an ophthalmologist friend of mine who specifically does not do laser surgeries for that reason - he can't afford it!

good luck,
ebmd