Information about Contact Lenses

More than 30 million people wear contact lenses in the United States, making it obvious that contact lenses are the number one choice for people who need vision correction. Contact lenses provide close to natural sight, flexibility and the different lenses available on the market makes them convenient for a variety of needs and preferences. People who wear contact lenses for the first time might have many questions regarding contact lens prescription, eye diseases, types of lenses, inserting and storing contacts, safety of contact lenses and much more.

This website was created to answer the questions of new contact lens wearers, but hopefully useful information will be provided for regular contact lens wearers as well.

If you consider wearing contact lenses please make sure to see an optometric physician or an ophthalmologist, as contact lenses are medical devices and your eyes need to be properly fitted by an eye care professional. This is the case even if you normally do not wear glasses and you just want contacts for cosmetic use, to change your eye color.

Can wearing of correctional or contact lenses lead to diseases of eyes or eye ailments? If the recent findings are any indication, yes, they can lead to serious complications and ailments, especially loss of vision, fungal infection and even permanent blindness though such cases are rare and are generally reported in circumstances where contact lenses were either not maintained properly or were according to prescription.

Those doctors, who examine patients with eye ailments, especially those related to microbial keratitis, should also check out for fungal infections and refer the patient to an ophthalmologist or eye specialist.

For those who use contact lenses, they should remove them immediately and consult their eye specialist in case of redness, or pain in their eyes. The increased light sensitivity that may be tearing and blurry vision, accompanied by a discharge or a swelling are the symptoms that should be taken seriously.

During past couple of years, cases of fungal infection in contact lens patients have taken the eye specialists by surprise. These infections basically originated from the solution supplied by the manufacturer of the contact lenses. Instead of correcting the vision, there have been cases where patients suffered loss of vision or were even on verge of turning blind.