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Comment by gdebel | Hacker News Reader

Hi, I'm an ophthalmologist, corneal specialist (and regular HN reader). I just would like to draw your attention to the absolute necessity to avoid any eye rubbing. This point is very often ignored by some colleagues, for various reasons. CXL will never increase your visual acuity, it is aimed at stabilizing the evolution (it is a controversial procedure). The most effective thing to stabilize your pathology is to avoid any eye rubbing. Please inform yourself about scleral lenses, too. Write me if you need to.

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Thanks for your response. I had my CXL procedure 3 years ago and afaik I have avoided eye-rubbing completely since then. I also wear scleral lenses but I can only get 8 hours at best on a good day due to eye dryness. Even with lubricating eye drops.

8 hours but I would have to remove them once or twice a day, which is a whole other rigamarole.

Shit, I have keratoconus with rigid lenses and been constantly rubbing my eyes for more than 10 years now. Been to two ophthalmologist and a couple opticians and no one ever mentioned that. Thanks for the warning!

I'll ask my ophthalmologist about scleral lenses or maybe hybrid or K-rose lenses as some other comments mentioned.

This is infuriating. This is why I always comment when I see people talking about KC on HN (guess what? There is a lot. I won't do the research but I'm almost sure that this is the most frequent pathologie people here talk about. Lots of computers, lots of concentration, lots of eye dryness,lots of eye rubbing).

There is more and more evidence to support the fact that KC is purely induced by eye rubbing.

Don't rub your eyes !

Can you point to some of the most relevant/recent research?

Yes, of course. A simple Pubmed query will bring a lot of occurrences : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Keratoconus+eye+rubbin...

For a complete argumentation and discussion about the case for the role of eye rubbing in keratoconus genesis, please look at this website : https://defeatkeratoconus.com/

(Disclaimer: I work closely with one of the main proponent of the eye rubbing hypothesis. However, please believe that I don't have any conflict of interest in this topic. I don't have anything to gain in raising awareness about this problem, except feeling that I'm doing something right)

Much appreciated! I certainly question it from personal experience, but I'm very interested to know more.

Yeah, never rub.

I also saw a study semi-recently about sleeping on stomach as a possible cause as it increases the pressure on eyes during sleep. Not sure how accurate the study is but I did used to do it a lot.

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