WHO WE ARE

The Boston Foundation for Sight grew out of the pioneering contact lens work of our president, Perry Rosenthal, M.D. who founded the Contact Lens Service at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary more than 40 years ago. Assistant clinical professor of ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Dr. Rosenthal has developed a family of unique contact lens devices designed to rehabilitate the profoundly impaired vision of patients who suffer from a variety of corneal eye diseases.

Dr. Rosenthal’s visionary work led to a major breakthrough in 1977 when he and his team of researchers developed a plastic that allowed oxygen to pass through the lens and enable the eye tissues to breathe. This plastic was known as The Boston Lens® and became the standard for rigid gas-permeable contact lenses world-wide.

Although this was an important achievement, there were still many patients whose diseased corneas were too fragile or distorted to support a hard contact lens. Dr. Rosenthal solved this problem by resurrecting an ancient contact lens design that had been discarded long ago as unworkable—a very large lens (the size of a quarter) that was entirely supported by the tough, insensitive, white tissue of the eye called the sclera.

The Boston Ocular Surface Prosthesis, the product of many years of research, combines the elements of advanced polymer chemistry, digital lens design and state-of-the-art computerized manufacturing technology. This novel lens received FDA approval in 1994, and has achieved a 90% success rate, with more than 1500 patients treated.

Unlike other types of contact lenses, the Boston Ocular Surface Prosthesis avoids any contact with the diseased cornea, creating instead a fluid-filled space that masks the distorted surfaces of damaged corneas and provides a unique therapeutic liquid bandage for some of the most devastating corneal diseases that torture their victims with constant, unrelenting pain and disabling photosensitivity and for which there was no definitive treatment options in the past. Dr. Rosenthal proved his theory that using his advanced oxygen-permeable plastic in fabricating these lenses would overcome the complications that led to their demise—that of corneal asphyxiation.

> Can Our Lenses Help You?

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