Contact Lens Program

The Contact Lens Program in The Vision Center at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, conducted by optometrist Dr. Natalia Uribe, sees about 700 patients a year, some as young as one month old. Many babies and young children with medical conditions such as congenital cataracts must wear contact lenses in order to correct their vision following surgery. Other conditions such as corneal scarring, keratoconus and retinopathy of prematurity are also corrected with contact lenses in order to maximize vision.

Generally, children who are referred to the Contact Lens Program are not candidates for glasses. In most of the cases, only one eye is affected and a prescription for eyeglasses in these cases would cause a big difference in the image size which either eye would get. This would cause the brain to “turn off” one of the images, leading to even poorer vision in the affected eye. Contact lenses, on the other hand, mimic the eye and input the correct visual signals to the brain with equal images sizes, resulting in normal vision.