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Back in control: Wyoming boy thriving after receiving new eye procedure

1
Brooks Sutherland, Cincinnati Enquirer
·5 min read
Louis Jahnigen, 15, sits in at his residence in Wyoming on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Jahnigen suffered from an eye disease called Keratoconus in his right eye.
Louis Jahnigen, 15, sits in at his residence in Wyoming on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Jahnigen suffered from an eye disease called Keratoconus in his right eye.

Louis Jahnigen simply thought he was clumsy.

For most of his young life, the 15-year-old Wyoming High School sophomore ran into things, struggled with activities he enjoyed like catching a baseball and even found himself missing the other hand on high-fives.

It never crossed his mind that he may have a vision issue. So when his school performed a routine eye exam in April of his freshman year, he was shocked to learn he had failed the test and that his right eye had 20/100 vision.

"That was the first time I knew I had an issue," Louis said. "I guess I had been blind in my right eye for a while and I hadn't even noticed, because I never closed my left eye and looked out of it."

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"I knew my vision wasn't great," he added. "But I thought I was just clumsy."

The school nurse who performed the vision test referred Jahnigen to an eye doctor in town. He went, had his eye dilated and had more tests performed. The result was that Louis had a rare eye disease that affects the structure of the cornea and results in vision loss. The disease is called keratoconus, it affects one in every 2,000 individuals, and threatens significant vision loss.

"It was really scary," Louis' mother Abby Jahnigen said. "He failed his high school vision test and we just assumed he needed glasses. So we went to the eye doctor and she just sat us down and said 'I know you don't expect to hear this, but he has this problem and it's rare, but it's treatable.' ...To go from hearing that he possibly needs glasses to he may need a cornea transplant is pretty extreme for a 15-year-old boy."

"Once we got the diagnosis, he was kind of putting the pieces together of how it was affecting his life," she added, noting that his depth perception often made basic tasks more difficult.

Coming to the Cincinnati Eye Institute

Louis was then referred to the Cincinnati Eye Institute to discuss his options. At the time, he was told he could get a cornea transplant, leave it as is with treatment, or elect to have a newer surgery that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2016 and wasn't yet offered in Cincinnati.

Louis Jahnigen, 15, sits in at his residence in Wyoming on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Jahnigen suffered from an eye disease called keratoconus in his right eye. The disease affects the structure of the cornea causing progressive loss of sight. He was treated for it in September in his right eye at the Cincinnati Eye Institute using the only FDA-approved treatment, which is completely new. The procedure is the first of its kind and involves corneal cross-linking with liquid riboflavin to the cornea to slow or halt the progression of keratoconus. Keratoconus is currently the leading cause of cornea transplants.

He was presented with information about that surgery.

The minimally-invasive procedure, corneal cross-linking, which is meant to slow down the keratoconus progression by stiffening the cornea through ultraviolet light and eye drops that contain riboflavin, had been increasing in use in the United States and the eye institute was close to being ready to perform its first procedures in Cincinnati.

But at the time, the institute wasn't quite ready.

"They didn't actually have the equipment yet, so that wasn't an option," Jahnigen recalled. "They said we could drive to Pittsburgh, or we could wait a couple months until they have it (equipment)."

Then in September after many appointments with Dr. Adam Kaufman, the eye institute was ready.