OUR TOP 10 REASONS FOR WEARING CONTACT LENSES

OUR TOP 10 REASONS FOR WEARING CONTACT LENSES

Thursday, 29 June 2017 07:34:03 Europe/London

Although contact lenses have been around for more than a century, the past decade has seen tremendous developments in lens materials and design to bring even greater benefits to contact lens wearers.

Today, almost all eyesight conditions can be corrected with contact lenses. Despite advances in spectacle lens technology and the advent of surgical techniques such as laser refractive surgery, contact lenses provide many advantages and a very successful form of vision correction. New manufacturing technology has also made contact lenses more affordable than ever before. That’s why there are now 3.7 million contact lens wearers in the UK, which represents nine per cent of adults aged 15-64 years.

Contact lenses offer natural all-round vision whilst enhancing your appearance
• Contact lenses are simple and convenient to use and expand lifestyle choices
• Contact lenses have many advantages for sport and leisure activities
• Contact lenses can be worn every day, part-time or just for going out and special occasions
• Vision with contact lenses can be as good as, or better than with spectacles
• Contact lenses offer a safe, effective, stable, and reversible alternative to refractive surgery
• Contact lenses can correct almost all eyesight conditions and are suitable for people of all ages
• Adaptation to contact lenses is rapid and trouble-free
• The latest contact lenses and solutions provide excellent comfort and eye health
• Some eye conditions can only be corrected with contact lenses

More advantages of the various types of contact lenses when compared to spectacles and refractive surgery are given in the following table (courtesy of Professor Nathan Efron and Optician).

A comparison of different forms of contact lenses

Characteristic	Soft	Rigid	Orthokeratology	Spectacle lenses	Refractive surgery
Field of view	Full	Full	Full	Restricted	Full
Stability of vision (post blink)	Excellent	Good	Excellent	Excellent	Excellent
Glare	None	In low light	None	None	Some post-surgery
Glare protection tint possible	Cosmetic only	No	No	Yes	N/A
UV protection possible	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	N/A
Initial comfort	Good	Poor	Fair	Good	Fair
Long-term comfort	Good	Good	Excellent	Good	Excellent
Adaptation required	Very little	Yes	Yes	Sometimes	N/A
Suitability for intermittent use	Yes	Not usually	No	Yes	No
Disposability viable	Yes	No	N/A	No	N/A
Risk of loss	Low	Moderate	N/A	Low	N/A
Risk of dislodgement during wear	Low	Moderate	Nil	High	N/A
Risk of damage during wear	Low	Low	Nil	High	Moderate (Lasik flap mislocation)
Risk of damage with handling	High	Low	Low	Low	N/A
Ease of care	Simple (nil for daily disposable)	Simple	Simple	Simple	N/A
Initial cost	Low	Moderate	High	Moderate	High
Ongoing costs	High	Moderate	Moderate	None	Nil
Cost to correct astigmatism	High	Low	Only limited correction possible	Low	High
Bifocal correction possible	Compromise	Very difficult	No	Yes	Monovision
Use in rain	Good	Good	Excellent	Poor	Good
Susceptibility to fog up	No	No	No	Yes	No
Susceptibility to dirt up	No	No	No	Yes	No
Risk of complication	Low	Negligible	Low	None	Moderate