Some of the best ideas come from listening to what patients have to say. Here is a simple contact lens tip from a patient. If you are always getting confused about which is your right or left lens there is an easy solution.
Once you receive your annual supply of contact lenses and are comfortable with the prescription, open the boxes and mark each individual lens package with a R or L. A fine tip permanent sharpie marker will adhere to the surface and leave a nice visible letter. For years we have marked the boxes right and left, but once a box is opened the individual lenses can get jumbled up if they fall out of the box. Also, you are forever having to look for which end of the box is marked. With 2-4 week disposable lenses it won’t take but a few minutes to put a large R or L on the individual containers and you are good to go for the rest of the year.
The only caveat is that an open or even marked box cannot be returned. Contact lenses are a medical device and your eye doctors office should have a no return policy on opened boxes. Like a prescription drug, you would not want to place a lens on your own eye that had been to places unknown and then dispensed to you, even if the lens is sealed. There could be bacterial contaminants on the container or it could have been exposed to extremes of heat, cold or other forms of chemical or biological contaminants and body fluids.
With the remarkable strides being made in contact lens comfort technology more people are changing to contact lenses that never would have considered them an option in the past. Don’t assume you are not a candidate for contact lenses because of dry eyes or bifocals. If your optometrist doesn’t discuss the option take the initiative and you may find yourself in the new world of contact lens comfort technology.
Vistakon is releasing a new contact lens called ACUVUE® OASYSTMfor PRESBYOPIA under the Acuvue Brand. The original Acuvue Bifocal contact lens was made from a material called Etafilcon. It worked by the wonder trademark called Pupil Intelligent DesignTM. The Acuvue Oasys Bifocal is designed on STEREO PRECISION TECHNOLOGYTM and HYDRACLEAR® PLUS technology.
HydraclearTM is a substance incorporated throughout the lens to help it remain moist. Other silicone hydrogel lenses use plasma surface treatments to help overcome the wetting problems that accompany silicone materials. Supposedly, the effect is similar in providing a wettable surface on the lenses.
It is not very clear what STEREO PRECISION TECHNOLOGYTMmeans. According to VISTAKON® the addition of an aspheric curve on the back of the lens helps eliminate the problems with ghosting. Aspheric curves flatten out as you move away from the edge similar to the shape of the eye. Aspheric lenses can improve vision by more closely resembling the corrective shape the eye needs, but it is not clear how the asphericity has an impact on ghosting. Only time will tell if this is an optical enhancing improvement.The change to the senofilcon A material will be a dramatic improvement in the oxygen permeability,comfort, and eye health the lens delivers. This is a welcome addition to the growing options we have for correcting presbyopia with contact lenses today.
The real innovation the original Avuvue Bifocal Lens contributed was a soft bifocal contact lens in a disposable format at a reasonable price. The secondary advantage was a large range of near prescription powers that could be individually adjusted, a new concept at the time. The lens design has 5 concentric rings of alternating distance and near zones. Theoretically, even if the lens does not center perfectly on the eye there are always sections of distance and near zones of the lens in your line of sight. Of course the disadvantage is there are always sections of distance and near zones of the lens in your line of sight that are responsible for ghost images. Given time, some people will adapt very well to this but in my experience that equates to about 20% of the people who try this design. The new ACUVUE® OASYSTMfor PRESBYOPIA uses the same concentric ring approach with the added back aspheric surface.
The Acuvue Oasys BifocalTMis being produced in the same Senofilcon-A material that has been used in the Acuvue Oasys Lens. This is a silicone hydrogel contact lens that works exceedingly well for about 25% of the patients I see. For the remaining 75% it is OK, just not the dramatic comfort improvement seen in certain individuals. The downside of the material is it tends to develop lens coatings in 10-14 days, sometimes a little shorter than the recommended 2 week replacement cycle.
Overall, this is another addition to help those of us with arms too short that want to continue enjoying the benefits of contact lenses
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