Michigan Contact Lens Opens 1-800-DRY-EYES Center in Expanded Southfield Facility

One year after relocating from Oak Park and nearly tripling its floor space, the specialty practice has opened a dedicated center for severe dry eye alongside two stations for teaching patients to handle scleral lenses independently.

Southfield, MI, Oct. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Michigan Contact Lens, a specialty contact lens practice led by Dr. Shira Kresch, OD, MS, FAAO, has completed its first year at an expanded facility at 17000 West 10 Mile Road in Southfield, Michigan, which now houses a dedicated center for the treatment of severe dry eye disease. The practice relocated from Oak Park in October 2025, moving from approximately 1,200 square feet to roughly 3,500 square feet.

1-800-Dry-Eyes and Michigan Contact Lens Outdoor

The dry eye center operates as 1-800-DRY-EYES, the practice’s sister practice devoted exclusively to dry eye disease, and consolidates treatments that previously shared space with general clinical work. The 1-800-DRY-EYES name now appears alongside Michigan Contact Lens on the building’s main exterior sign. In-office options include intense pulsed light therapy, LipiFlow thermal pulsation, BlephEx lid cleaning, low-level light therapy, and autologous serum eye drops for severe ocular surface disease.

Dry eye is commonly treated as a matter of lubricating drops. For a subset of patients it is not. Where the cause is meibomian gland dysfunction, inflammation, or exposure from incomplete lid closure, drops address the symptom while the underlying mechanism continues to produce it — which is why patients can find themselves instilling drops many times a day with little lasting relief. The treatments consolidated in the new center target those mechanisms rather than the sensation.

The expanded facility also added clinical capacity rather than waiting space: two exam lanes, expanded corneal imaging and diagnostic testing, an in-house spectacle edging lab, and two stations dedicated solely to teaching patients how to insert and remove scleral lenses.

Those training stations address a specific and frequently underestimated obstacle. Scleral lenses are larger than conventional contact lenses and are filled with saline before insertion, and handling them is a learned skill that typically takes one to two weeks of daily practice. Patients who struggle with handling in the first weeks are among the most likely to abandon the lenses, often regardless of how well the lenses correct their vision.

“Learning to handle the lens is the part that decides whether someone keeps wearing it,” said Dr. Kresch. “When a patient struggles, it is almost never the lens and almost always the handling, and handling is teachable. Having space set aside for it means nobody is being taught in the corner of a busy exam room, and nobody goes home before they are confident doing it on their own.”

The practice fits scleral lenses and other specialty contact lenses for patients whose vision cannot be corrected with glasses or conventional soft lenses, including those with keratoconus, irregular astigmatism, corneal scarring, eyes that have undergone corneal transplant or refractive surgery, and severe dry eye disease. Scleral lenses hold a reservoir of sterile saline against the cornea throughout the wearing day, which is one reason they are used in ocular surface disease as well as for vision correction.

Specialty lens fitting differs from a routine contact lens prescription in both method and duration. Rather than selecting a lens from a standard trial set, the practice maps the three-dimensional shape of each patient’s eye using corneal topography and Eaglet Eye scleral profilometry, which was added with the move, and designs a lens from that map. The distinction matters because the sclera, where a scleral lens lands, is asymmetric in most people, and a lens selected rather than designed may rest unevenly.

Dr. Kresch has practiced optometry for more than 10 years. She holds a Doctor of Optometry and a Master of Science in Vision Science, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry.

Michigan Contact Lens also co-manages patients with referring optometrists, ophthalmologists and corneal surgeons across Metro Detroit. Patients referred for specialty lens fitting are returned to their referring provider for primary eye care, with a written report covering the imaging findings, the lens design selected and the recommended follow-up interval.

The practice operates out of network by choice and does not bill insurance directly. Patients receive an itemized superbill for submission to their own insurer for any out-of-network reimbursement available under their plan.

Michigan Contact Lens serves patients from Southfield, Birmingham, Royal Oak, Troy, Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield, Novi, Oak Park, Huntington Woods, Rochester Hills and Detroit. Initial specialty consultations are complimentary.

For journalists covering keratoconus or ocular surface disease, the practice maintains a reference page of keratoconus statistics in which each figure is cited to its source study, with confidence intervals and study limitations stated.

About Michigan Contact Lens
Michigan Contact Lens is a specialty contact lens practice in Southfield, Michigan, led by Dr. Shira Kresch, OD, MS, FAAO. The practice fits scleral, rigid gas permeable, hybrid and prosthetic contact lenses for patients with keratoconus, irregular corneas, post-surgical eyes and severe dry eye, provides myopia management for children, and operates the 1-800-DRY-EYES dry eye center at the same location.

Press Inquiries

Dr. Yocheved Shira Kresch, OD, MS, FAAO — Optometrist
Website: https://michigancontactlens.com/
Email: info [at] michigancontactlens.com
Phone: (248) 545-2800