Contact lenses may be a great option for correcting your vision and today, just about anybody can wear them. With more healthy, convenient and versatile options than ever before, there are contact lenses available for most lifestyle and visual needs.
In the United States, contact lenses are categorized as medical devices and therefore require a prescription. They must be prescribed and properly fit by an eyecare professional. The doctors at Ross Eyecare are among the leaders in their profession at fitting and prescribing the best contact lens for each individual. They have over 50 years of combined experience including years of involvement in the research and development of contact lenses. They have access to the most advanced contact lens materials on the market as well as the most sophisticated techniques to help prescribe them. Prescribing the proper material along with the best contact lens design and fit specifically tailored for the visual and lifestyle needs of the individual patient are the keys to successful contact lens comfort, vision and overall patient satisfaction.
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Astigmatism/Toric Contact Lenses:
In the past, patients with significant amounts of astigmatism in their glasses prescription were often excluded from wearing soft contact lenses. Today, your astigmatism can most likely be corrected with soft contact lenses. In fact, most contact lens materials and replacement options available for regular contact lenses are now available for correcting astigmatism. Lenses designed to be discarded daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly or yearly are available for our patients with astigmatism. Contacts for patients with dry eyes or for patients who prefer to sleep with their lenses in are also options for correcting astigmatism.
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Extended Wear/Silicone Hydrogel Contact Lenses:
A new generation of contact lenses made from a plastic known as silicone hydrogel provides many times more oxygen to the front of the eye than conventional soft lenses.
These materials make overnight or continuous wear safer. In fact, they deliver so much oxygen to the cornea that some brands are approved for up to 30 days of continuous wear.
They also dry less than traditional soft lenses.
This feature makes them an excellent choice for comfortable wear throughout the day, whether our patients sleep with them in or choose to take them out on a daily basis.
Silicone hydrogel lenses are available from multiple manufacturers including Acuvue Oasys, Ciba Night and Day, Ciba O2 Optix, Biofinity, and Bausch and Lomb Purevision.
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Contact Lenses for Dry Eyes:
The Proclear Compatible contact lens (available for patients who require regular lenses, toric lenses or even bifocal lenses) includes a substance found naturally in human cells called Phosphorylcholine.
This compound creates a biocompatible lens material that feels moist and comfortable all day long. The doctors at Ross Eyecare have been successfully prescribing these lenses for our patients who have historically been unable to comfortably wear contact lenses. Another option, the Extreme H20 contact is made with a unique, advanced material called Hioxifilicon. This patented material made with a glycerin derivative, has unique water binding properties allowing the contact lens to retain virtually all of its original water content throughout the day.
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Daily Disposable Contact Lenses:
Perhaps the healthiest and most convenient way to wear contact lenses is the single use disposable lens. These lenses are worn during waking hours then simply discarded at the end of the day. Daily disposable lenses allow us to eliminate the daily hassle of caring for lenses and the cost of purchasing solutions.
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Bifocal/Monovision Contact Lenses:
For our patients who need reading help over their contacts, but do not want to wear reading glasses, there are several options available. Bifocal or multifocal contacts have a range of power in each lens. Each lens allows the patient to see at different distances within the same contact lens. Each eye sees well at distance, intermediate, and at near. Bifocal or multifocal contact lenses do compromise the crispness or sharpness of vision that is achieved. There is also a learning curve to allow the brain to interpret the multiple images presented by these lens designs. When successful, they provide comfortable vision for some of our most thankful patients.
Monovision involves prescribing contact lenses so that one eye sees at near (reading) and the other eye sees at distance. While this may sound unusual, most people actually acclimate well to it. Here too, there is a learning curve as the brain learns to pay attention to the image that it requires for the task at hand.
Both monovision lenses and bifocal/mutlifocal lenses are available in most contact lens materials as well as the full range of disposable replacement schedules from daily disposable to yearly disposable.
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Rigid Gas Permeable Contact Lenses:
Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) contacts are more rigid than soft contact lenses, but should not be confused with the old-style hard lenses that did not allow any oxygen to pass through them. The newest RGP materials actually allow more oxygen to directly pass through the lens than many soft contact lens materials. In some cases, RGP contacts provide better vision, durability and deposit resistance than soft contact lenses. They are fairly easy to maintain and can last several years. For some patients, RGP lenses may be the lens of choice.
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Specialty/Medical Contact Lenses:
Some patients have unusually high prescriptions or conditions that lead to irregularly-shaped corneas. These patients often require non-traditional contact lens designs and materials. Fitting these lenses requires a high level of expertise and sophisticated diagnostic equipment. The doctors at Ross Eyecare are among the most experienced in the country at prescribing lenses for patients with keratoconus, irregular astigmatism, corneal transplants, extremely high astigmatism, myopia or hyperopia or post refractive surgery vision loss.
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FOCUS ON DRY EYE
One of the most common conditions we treat in our office is dry eye.
• Symptoms include: general eye irritation, grittiness, scratchiness, burning, a feeling that something is in the eye, and excessive watering (as a reflex response to the underlying dryness)
• Causes of dry eye: Improper balance of tear production versus tear drainage and/or a change in the biochemical make-up of the tear film.
- Environmental influences – pollution, dry heat during the winter, dry air conditioned air in the summer, blowing air in the car or from ceiling fans
- Systemic medications – antihistamines, decongestants, blood pressure medications, birth control pills…
- Systemic conditions – arthritis, lupus, diabetes, ulcerative colitis, crohn’s disease…
- Hormonal changes – peri or post menopausal changes
- Eye lid inflammation/infection
• Treatments are specifically tailored to managing the underlying cause(s) – Please feel free to call our office to schedule an office visit with one of our doctors and remember to specifically discuss any of your symptoms or concerns. We are here to help. Remember, most health insurance plans will cover your visit when it is related to a health oriented issue such as dry eye.
For further information on Dry Eyes, please click our video links below: