Adeline's Colored Contact Lenses Insight

“Hard to Fit” Patients

Contact Lenses for Keratoconus
A practitioner who is familiar with hard-to-fit cases is likely to fit a keratonic patient with a rigid gas permeable (rgp) contact lens. Unlike a soft lens, it retains its shape on the cornea. However, when the cornea is so irregular it needs cushioning, a piggyback technique may be best. Piggybacking means you wear two lenses on each eye. A soft lens drapes over the cornea and an RGP rests on top.

Mild to moderate keratoconus is best corrected with rigid gas permeable contact lenses, which provide a smooth surface in front of the cornea, making clear vision possible. Because the lens is rigid, the tears between the lens and the cornea form a ‘liquid lens,’ which smoothes out the irregularities of the cornea and makes clear vision possible again. Soft lenses, which ‘wrap’ onto the cornea and take up its shape much more closely than rigid lenses, are less successful at correcting keratoconus.

Contact Lenses for Astigmatism
Toric lenses are specially designed to correct astigmatism. They have an additional power element called a cylinder. They have greater light-bending power in one axis than in others.

However, the process of finding the best lens can be tedious, since there are varying degrees of astigmatism and each person's cornea measures up differently.

There are two types of hard-to-fit astigmats and there are two types of contact lenses to treat astigmatism. One is the person in whom a toric lens rotates too much, causing blurred vision. Another is the person with very high astigmatism. While a custom soft lens might work well, those with significant astigmatism may be best off getting an RGP for optimum visual clarity.

Your eye-care professional will perform precise tests during your eye examination to determine the ideal lens prescription.

Contact Lenses for People with Dry Eyes
Some symptoms of dry eyes are:

• feeling as if something is in your eye
• tearing for no reason
• frequent red or burning eyes
• having very watery tears

If you have chronically dry eyes, you are better off seeing a practitioner who understands how different lens materials react with the eye. A very thin lens dries up too fast. Frequently, a fairly thick, soft, one-day disposable contact lens can work well for people with dry eyes. Practitioners generally recommend soft lenses made with low water content because these lenses dehydrate less than high-water lenses do in a dry environment. However, different types of “dry eye” may require different contact lens approaches.

Contact Lenses for Presbyopia
It's not a specific set of physical characteristics that can make a presbyopic person hard to fit with contact lenses. Rather, it's because there are many different kinds of contact lens designs for presbyopia, and different designs work better for different people.

Aging causes your eyes to lose their ability to adjust between near and far objects. The lens within your eye is less able to change its shape in order to focus on items up close.

This is known as presbyopia and it is an inevitable result of aging . . . but now, at least you can keep it to yourself.

Multifocal lenses work by enabling your eye to view near objects through special areas on the lens surface. The lens translates naturally with the movement of your eye just like you would in a pair of multifocal glasses.