The window the rest of your eye depends on.
The cornea does most of your focusing. When it clouds, swells, thins or scars, no glasses prescription can correct around it — and that is corneal disease, not a refractive problem.
When your prescription keeps changing and nothing quite works.
That is often the first sign that the problem is the surface of the eye rather than the strength of the lens in front of it.
Dry eye & the ocular surface
Most blurred vision blamed on a prescription is really an unstable tear film. To improve the vision it is essential to treat the glands, not just the surface.More on dry eye
Infections & ulcers
Corneal infections move quickly and are one of the few things in eye care that genuinely cannot wait. Contact lens wearers with a red, painful eye should be seen the same day.
Keratoconus
Progressive thinning that distorts the cornea into a cone. Typically appears in the teens and twenties, and the prescription changes fast. We diagnose it, monitor progression, and manage the vision with scleral and rigid gas permeable lens fitting by Dr. Gallagher — which is what actually restores usable vision in an irregular cornea. We do not perform corneal cross-linking.
Fuchs’ dystrophy
The cells that keep the cornea clear gradually fail, so vision is foggy in the morning and clears as the day goes on. It also changes how we plan cataract surgery, which is why it should be identified beforehand.
Corneal transplantation
We perform DMEK and DSAEK — partial-thickness transplants that replace only the failing inner layer, with faster visual recovery and less to go wrong — as well as full-thickness transplantation where the whole cornea needs replacing. Performed by Dr. Logan Vander Woude.
Pterygium
The tissue growth Florida sun and wind produce. It is removed when it threatens vision, encroaches on the visual axis, or simply will not stop being irritating.
Why this sits inside a full eye practice.
Corneal disease rarely arrives alone. It changes the measurements that determine your cataract lens. It complicates glaucoma drops. It decides whether you are a candidate for laser vision correction and whether LASIK or PRK is safer for your eyes.
Dr. Vander Woude is fellowship-trained in cornea and refractive surgery, performs our corneal transplants, and works alongside the surgeons making those other decisions — not across town from them.
Bring us the eye nobody could explain.
If your vision does not match your prescription, the cornea is the first place we look.