Yes, the lenses gently mold your eyes while you sleep. As long as you sleep in the lenses for a continuous 6-8 hours, your vision will reach full, waking-hour clarity within a 1-2 week time frame.

During your transition period and depending on the size/type of your prescription, you will be given soft contacts or loaner glasses to ease the transition.

Your vision will become clearer day by day, and the clarity will last longer and longer with each passing day. But during the first couple of weeks, your vision will go from clear to your original level of blurriness by the day’s end. The period of blurriness decreases with each day until full clarity is reached.

The lens is made with a more rigid material, so initially it’s more noticeable and requires a little more adaptation. The good news is that since the lenses are inserted right before bedtime, most of the adaptation takes place while you sleep! Full adaptation occurs over 2-3 weeks.

The vision-correcting effect is programmed to last for ~24 hours, but some patients can experience clear vision for 36 hours without having to rewear the lens. How long your vision remains clear after 24 hours depends on the size of your prescription.

Yes, vision is very clear with the lenses on.  They are designed not only to mold the cornea, but to also give you clear vision if you have to wake up in the middle of the night (for the restroom, emergency evacuations, etc).

Patients with lower prescriptions don’t notice an obvious difference the next day, but patients with higher prescriptions will notice blurriness in the distance. Computer tasks for patients are definitely workable if you miss a night, but night driving is not recommended. Soft contacts can be given to you to make up for any residual blur.

Your vision returns to normal over 1-2 weeks.

Glare is the primary side effect, which occurs with any procedure that alters the cornea. Glare also occurs with LASIK/PRK/SMILE/etc as well. Glare tends to be more noticeable in the initial adaptation period, which lasts 1-2 months. After that period, the brain learns to adapt and filter out the majority of glare. Patients with higher prescriptions can have lasting glare in very dark conditions.

Patients are told not to sleep in soft contacts because of the extra exposure to debris, germs, oil, and mucus that accumulates on them through the first wake cycle, the next sleep cycle, and the resulting wake cycle (patients don’t typically sleep in contacts and then remove them the next morning, they usually wear them again the next day). Coupled with the fact that our eyes don’t breathe the same under contact lenses, infections can result.

With Ortho-K, you only wear them for a period of 7-8 hours maximum while under clean conditions. The lenses are kept in their disinfectant case all day until you’re ready to insert them immediately before bedtime.

Our infection rate with Ortho-K is zero since our office’s inception.

It is not covered by insurance. It can be submitted to FSA/HSA, however.