Xiamen Evening News 2012-6-14 Cone cornea is an eye disease that is more frightening than high myopia. Its initial manifestation is the rapid deepening of myopia and astigmatism, which is often mistaken for myopia. It is only in the middle stage of development that patients will experience significant loss of vision, visual distortion, monocular diplopia, dark shadows, photophobia and other obvious symptoms. In the advanced stage of development, vision is severely reduced, and the cornea may even be perforated, leading to blindness. Xiao Liu, 27 years old, suffered from acute cone keratitis in his right eye last year and was close to blindness. He was seen at a local hospital, where doctors treated him according to necrotizing keratitis, and did not regain manual light perception after treatment. In March this year, Xiao Liu again experienced vision loss, and only after a check did she find that her left eye, which was originally 600 degrees nearsighted, had risen to 1,000 degrees at once. She rushed to Xiamen Eye Center for examination, and her left eye was determined to be in the middle stage of cone cornea, and Xiao Liu, who only had vision in one eye left, was very anxious. Under the doctor’s advice, she had a riboflavin UV cross-linking procedure. At present, Xiao Liu’s condition is under control and the doctor said that if the situation continues to improve, she may not need to receive a corneal transplant. There is another case of the same kind. 30-something-year-old Xiaogang, a native of Shenzhen, had an acute cone cornea in his right eye and had a corneal transplant at a local hospital six months ago, during which he also discovered that his left eye also suffered from the disease. For six months, he has been traveling around and getting treatment. He also joined the cone keratoconus Q group to collect treatment methods, and learned that currently only riboflavin irradiation is the only treatment method. When he heard that the Xiamen Eye Center was carrying out riboflavin UV cross-linking, he rushed to Xiamen for treatment. At present, Xiao Gang’s myopia has been reduced by 100 degrees and his condition has been greatly relieved. The director of the Xiamen Eye Center’s ocular surface and keratoconus specialty, Wu Guoping, said that cone cornea is an eye disease in which the central cornea thins and protrudes forward in a cone-like protrusion, with thinning of the corneal stroma in the protrusion area, often causing high irregular myopia astigmatism and varying degrees of visual impairment, usually without inflammatory symptoms. The onset of the disease is mostly in the 20s, so adolescents who have progressive myopia and high astigmatism should be alert to the possibility of having a cone cornea. Wu said, riboflavin UV cross-linking technology is the application of photochemical principles to improve corneal hardness and enhance the biochemical and mechanical stability of the corneal stroma. Since 1998, the technology has been used in more countries, more hospitals, more patients and more fields. Clinical experience accumulated over the years shows that riboflavin UV cross-linking can significantly improve the resistance of the cornea to various degradation enzymes, and can be used for eye diseases such as medically induced corneal dilatation, large vesicular keratopathy, infectious keratitis, and superficial corneal ulcers, in addition to the treatment of conical cornea. Since this technology was launched in July last year, the Department of Ocular Surface and Cornea Diseases of Xiamen Eye Center has helped more than 50 people find relief and bought time for corneal transplantation, and some patients even no longer need corneal transplantation. Recently, Xiamen Eye Center has also introduced the latest equipment – the second generation machine for riboflavin UV cross-linking – UV-X™ 2000 (http://www.irocmedical.com/contao/uv-x-2000.html) and hypotonic riboflavin, expanding the cone corneal indications for surgery, shortening the treatment irradiation time from the original 30 minutes to 10 minutes, with more minimally invasive, low-risk, effective, and easy to operate characteristics. Medical Dictionary】Riboflavin UV CrosslinkingRiboflavin UV Crosslinking is a new international surgical procedure for cone-shaped corneas in recent years. It can effectively stop the further development of the cone cornea while also resolving the refractive error of about 100-150 and improving the visual acuity to a certain extent. It can somewhat reduce the need for corneal transplantation to treat cone corneas, can alleviate the problem of scarce corneal sources, and will not have any effect on corneal transplants performed later, and has become one of the standard treatments for cone corneas internationally.