23 weeks after SMILE Pro surgery
Hello everyone,
I'm sharing my journey for finding a solution to improve my vision quality after SMILE surgery. I hope this post helps other people who consider the scleral lens option to address vision complications after refractive surgery.
Since I received the surgery, I have been having vision issues, including having a hard time seeing at night, constant refocusing while reading texts on screens, and low resolution under low light settings. After seeing multiple ophthalmologists and optometrists, I concluded that the issue was predominantly caused by an increase in HOA (high-order aberrations) due to the narrow treatment zone (6mm).
To resolve this vision issue, I decided to try a scleral lens.
Thankfully, in the initial demo fitting, the clarity of my vision came back. When I tried the demo fitting for the first time, my vision was completely washed out, but when the optometrist put the trial lens to correct residual myopia and astigmatism, my vision came back so clear, like I had my glasses on before the surgery. I was elated that my vision could be restored.
Since this is demo lens, the feeling of wearing the lens wasn't as comfortable as I imagined it to be because I felt some scratchy and foreign object sensation in my eyeballs. However, the optometrist said that it was because the lens is not completely fitted to me yet, and once I'm in the fitting process, they will be able to help me find the lens that can be fitted. Also, I was fortunate enough that I didn't need an HOA-corrected scleral lens because the standard one pretty much resolved all the HOA issues I'm having. For visual reference, I'm attaching the before and after demo scleral lens from the aberrometer.
These tests were done under low-light conditions to enlarge my pupil and measure the HOA.
Point spread function plots indicate what a single point of light looks like after it passes through our eye’s optics.
As you can see, with the naked eye, the light point is scattered all over the place.
Right eye - HOA RMS: 0.75 um
Pupil size: 6.33 mm
Left eye - HOA RMS: 0.77 um
But after wearing a scleral lens, the light point is more centered to become a single point.
Also, it reduced the HOA significantly and noted that you still see a washout image of simulated Snellen E because of residual low-order aberrations (cylinder/spherical), which can easily be corrected once they put the prescription into the custom scleral lens.
Right eye - total HOA RMS: 0.21 um
Pupil size: 6.33 mm
Zernike Analysis on Right Eye with Scleral lens
Left eye - total HOA RMS: 0.23 um
Pupil size: 6.33 mm
Zernike Analysis on Left Eye with Scleral lens
This scleral lens fitting experience has given me great hope that I can improve my quality of vision.
Posted Dec 4, 2025, 11:03 PM UTC