Vendor Spotlight: Dalsey Adaptives
Context: Scleral lens insertion problems
New scleral lens users face a lot of challenges. Perhaps one of the very most stressful is learning how to put the lenses in. For some people, this is a slam dunk - no big deal. For others, it's an ordeal that can last for weeks or months and can seriously interfere with their ability to benefit from the lenses. And when the lenses are a medical essential, the stakes are high!
Dalsey's innovation: See-Green
Many years ago, Dalsey Adaptives developed the See-Green system:
- a stand to hold a plunger, so that you can bring your eye to the lens rather than bringing the lens to your eye; and
- a green light designed for use inside a plunger, to help you position and center the lens correctly
These tools can be used separately or together. Some people whose main issue is hand tremors or a strong blink reflex use the stand in order to hold the lens steady, but don't need the light. Others who have no problem with the basic mechanics of insertion but have very low vision use only the light so that they can focus on the center of the lens in order to position it correctly. Many more use both the stand and the light together.
This tool has been core to countless scleral lens users' success over the years.
Today, we have additional options, and of course many people create home-made stands of some kind. But the See-Green system remains the king of its class.
Dry Eye Shop and Dalsey Adaptives
Here at the Shop, we only started selling the See-Green system in 2019. But it's been around far longer, and I had been trying for years to persuade them to let us stock it for ages. Why? Certainly not for the money. (While the retail price may seem expensive, it's actually the lowest margin product family we stock.) No, it was because by selling certain products we know that we can greatly increase awareness of the options (amongst both patients and doctors), and this was a classic case.
So I was very happy to finally be able to add them to our scleral lens section!
What the product means to people
Of all of the products we stock, I would say this is the one that people sometimes express the strongest feelings about. They are not unanimous, of course - different people have different needs. But there is no other single product about which I've seen such consistently strong and heartfelt gratitude.
Like I said, the stakes are often very high. When the only thing standing between you and functional vision, or comfortable vision, or maintaining your ocular surface health, is lacking the means to get a giant hard thing in your eye, it's pretty motivating, and people are very appreciative when things work.
Warranty support
I love being able to rely on a company's customer service.
We have a handful of vendors whose service is so strong that when our customer service sends someone directly to them for a warranty or other issue, I have no doubt whatsoever that they will be well taken care of. That's the kind of confidence I have in Dalsey. Someone's light stops working two weeks or two years from purchase? No problem. It's taken care of.
Thank you, Dalsey!
I am grateful to Dalsey Adaptives for consistently making this reliable, high-quality product for a very, very small niche market. They do good work.
About this blog series
A key part of what the Dry Eye Shop does is to gather together a wide variety of dry eye and scleral lens products and wrap them up in information and practical tips to help you understand them from the patient's perspective.
We purchase from a growing number of companies, ranging from "mom & pop" developers of niche products for certain special needs of the corneal disease world to multi-national pharmaceutical companies selling familiar brands of eye drops.
We appreciate our vendors of all sizes and types and want to tell you more about them! This year, I've been sharing every so often about one of these companies - who they are, how and why (and what) we started purchasing from them and when, and what they mean to us.