Corneal Refractive Therapy. It sounds pretty complicated, maybe even a little scary, but in reality it is a very simple (and pain-free) process that offers freedom from daytime contact lens or glasses wear. Nearly any person with myopia (nearsightedness) can benefit from CRT, especially children.
CRT is simply the process of wearing a special hard contact lens or mold at night while you sleep. The nearsighted cornea is more pointed than a regular cornea so molds are used to flatten the point and correct the vision.
Aside from the day or two it takes for your eyes to adjust to wearing hard contact lenses, you won’t even know any of this is happening. You just put the molds in at night and wake up to corrected vision. This correction does wear off as the cornea returns to its original shape, but after you’ve worn the molds nightly for a couple of weeks, you will find that your vision is fully corrected for the entire day.
Long time CRT patients even find that they can eventually wear the molds less often, every other night or so, and their vision will remain corrected the entire time.CRT is great for nearsighted adults who want freedom from wearing contact lenses or glasses during the day. Here at VisionArts, however, our main focus for CRT is myopic children. CRT has been effectively proven to slow or even stop the progression of nearsightedness in children.
Myopia is known to worsen year after year as a child grows. A myopic child is likely to continue needing stronger glasses or contacts at every visit until they completely stop growing, usually age 21 or so. If we are able to fit a child in corneal molds very early on, that child can not only avoid having to wear contact lenses or glasses, but more importantly, over time, we can maintain their current prescription rather than their vision progressively getting worse.
This can be life changing for a child. Glasses are a challenge for children. They worry about how to keep their glasses safe while they play with their friends or participate in sports. They struggle to see without them so they can go swimming or even take a bath or shower. They deal with blurry vision as their myopia continues to progress month after month.
This can all be solved by using CRT to correct a child’s vision. Halting this progression not only positively impacts the child’s life, but it will carry with them into adulthood. A child who may have been wearing half inch thick corrective lenses by age 18 may not be wearing any glasses at all at that age if they’ve used CRT molds throughout their adolescents.
Corneal Refractive Therapy is simple, but potentially life changing treatment that works while you are sleeping. If you are interested in learning more about how CRT can help you or your child gain freedom for daytime glasses or contact lenses, visit or call 573-642-6800.