Yes! Scleral lenses are unique because instead of touching the eye, they are filled with a saline similar to your tears, prior to inserting them in your eye.
This liquid then sits on your eye all day long, keeping you comfortable, and also moisturizing the cornea.
This can treat dry eye because the incredibly sensitive surface of your cornea is not drying out or being insulted by the constant blinking over a dry surface.
A lifetime of extremely dry eyes can actually cause the cornea to grow bumps called Salzmann's Nodules from chronic irritation. Not to mention that your eyes may always be uncomfortable and red.
We use scleral lenses to heal the eye in severe forms of dryness such as exposure keratopathy (when the lids cannot close which dries out the eye). Sjogren's Syndrome, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, and Graft-versus-Host Disease.
Another benefit to scleral lens therapy is that it can make your vision better. Many people with dry eye have irregular astigmatism, which is when the front of the eye has an irregular, not spherical or symmetric, shape. This causes your vision to become blurrier, even with glasses and soft contact lenses. This is because when light (images) hit this irregular surface, they spread out and hit the retina in a "spray" of light, which degrades the image.
To best find out if you are a candidate, a visit with your Doctor to take scans of the front of the eye (to determine irregular astigmatism) and observe the ocular surface, is the first step in getting treatment!
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