Prospective Evaluation of Photorefractive Intrastromal Crosslinking (PiXL) Without Epithelium Debridement (Epi-on) in High Oxygen for Progressive Keratoconus.

The study is designed as a prospective, open-label, nonrandomized trial involving participants of both genders aged 18-35 years with Keratoconus planned for routine corneal crosslinking at the Department of Ophthalmology, Umeå University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden.

The study includes 30 participants with unilateral Keratoconus, receiving Epi-on PiXL in high oxygen environment (n=30). All patients are informed about the procedures before consenting to participate in the study.

At baseline, before treatment, each eye is examined with slit-lamp microscopy, subjective refraction, determination of uncorrected (UCVA), low contrast visual acuity at 2.5 percentage contrast and 10 percentage contrast and best corrected (BSCVA) visual acuities using the LogMAR fast protocol and intraocular pressure (IOP) using Goldmann applanation tonometry. Under standardized, mesopic light conditions each eye is evaluated by keratometry readings and central corneal thickness, extracted from Schemipflug camera measurements, Pentacam HR® (Oculus, Inc. Lynnwood, WA) and AS-OCT (Fourier domain OCT CASIA2, Tomey Technology and vision, Germany).

Central corneal endothelial photographs are taken with the Topcon SP-IP specular microscope (Topcon Europe B.V., Capelle a/d Ijssel, the Netherlands) and total ocular wavefront is measured with iTrace (Tracey Technologies, Inc.).

Ocular discomfort is subjectively evaluated in each eye by a specific visual analogous rating scale at 4h, 8h, 12h, 24h and thereafter daily up to 1 week postoperatively.