Scleral lens decentration can cause any number of lens fitting concerns, including corneal bearing and increased higher-order aberrations.1 Clinicians need to have the tools necessary to identify and quantify this problem to help adjust lens fits and keep patients happy in their lenses. A team of Australian researchers recently found that clinicians can use over-topography to quantify scleral lens decentration without the need for a customized instrument or image analysis software.2

The researchers captured scleral lens over-topography on 10 healthy participants wearing a 16.5mm diameter miniscleral lens after15 minutes of lens settling. They used the tangential power over-topography maps with both a standard and normalized dioptric scale to quantify the horizontal and vertical lens decentration.2

The team found that the mean lens decentration was 0.62 ± 0.18mm temporally and 0.91 ± 0.33mm inferiorly. The lens decentration calculated using tangential topography maps with standard power scales was more repeatable than measurements derived from normalized maps.2

“This method has a range of potential applications in research and clinical practice,” the study concludes.2

1. GP Lens Institute. Scleral lens troubleshooting FAQs. www.gpli.info/pdf/GPLISLSTSGuide11017.pdf. Accessed April 19, 2019.

2. Vincent SJ, Collins MJ. A topographical method to quantify scleral contact lens decentration. Cont Lens Ant Eye. April 11, 2019. [Epub ahead of print].