Recently I saw a patient with Down syndrome on whom I had performed bilateral corneal cross-linking 5 years ago.
This young woman, now 28 years old, is engaged to be married, works in a bridal shop and has been enjoying increasing independence. She has a zest for life that I know could so easily have been compromised or limited by visual impairment if we had not caught her keratoconus and treated it early.
There is a high prevalence of keratoconus in people with trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. Keratoconus can progress more rapidly and present more severely in this population, so we want to treat