July 04: For 17 months, Joe Zienowicz lived in a world of darkness and pain, where every eye blink felt like barbed wire and even the dimmest light was an unbearable torment.
At 38, Zienowicz contracted Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a severe and violent allergic reaction to medicine prescribed for a sore elbow. The disease had blistered his skin, his mucous membranes, even his eyes, eventually rendering him blind and in constant agony.


The cornea is the transparent, dome-shaped covering of the colored part of the eye.


Dense with nerve fibers, the cornea is also the body’s most sensitive tissue; for proper vision, it must be smooth and clear.

Until recently, ophthalmologists would have had little to offer him. But a new kind of contact lens is giving him relief and sight, and it has potential to offer similar benefits to at least a half million people worldwide with severe eye-surface diseases.



The new lens also has the potential to change the treatment strategy for keratoconus, a progressive thinning and bulging of the cornea, distorting vision. It may restore vision when a corneal transplant heals poorly. And it may comfort nonblind people with painfully dry eyes.


"The beauty of this lens is that it doesn't touch the cornea," said Dr. Ernest W. Kornmehl, a corneal specialist in Boston. The new lens rests on the sclera, the white of the eye, which is far less sensitive. Bureau Report