For many of us, wearing contact lenses isn’t something that we regard as being hazardous to our health. They improve our vision, are easy to wear and allow us to do things we might not be able to do with glasses. But there are risks involved with wearing lenses that, while being the more extreme cases, should act as a word of warning to all wearers.
Daily wear
One example of a cautionary tale is of a woman who had been wearing her lenses for more than 14 hours a day since she was in her mid-teens. Common advice from opticians is to only wear lenses for around eight hours a day but this one wearer had been wearing them for far longer than this, every single day. The result was a scary conversation with the optician about how she had been starving her eyes of oxygen and could be in danger of losing her sight.
The factor that frightened this lady the most is that there were no visible signs of a problem. She didn’t have any changes visible on her eyes, she had had no pain or excessive redness. The condition was only visible when studied by the optician. Called corneal neovascularisation, the condition involves the cornea not getting the oxygen it needs. This clear outer layer of the eyeball is the only part of the human body that needs to get oxygen from the air, not the blood stream. By wearing the contact lenses for so long every day, she was preventing the cornea getting the required oxygen and was causing damage.
Common problems
Other conditions can be easier to spot but sometimes wearers can ignore them, underestimating their seriousness. One such condition is called blepharitis. This is an inflammation of the eyelids that happens when contact lenses are worn for too long. It causes the whites of the eye to become reddened and the eye to become dry and at risk of infection.
While it isn’t a condition that can be cured, blepharitis can be managed by regularly cleaning the eye with boiled water that has cooled. It also needs massaging to remove any sticky deposits or flakes of dry skin that can build up under the lid.
Water danger
Perhaps the easiest danger to fall into is regarding the mixture of water and contact lenses. Tap water as well as swimming pool water and the water in rivers and lakes can contain a microscopic organism called an Acanthamoeba that can lead to painful eye infections. This is why opticians always say to use solution to store lenses overnight, not simply water from the tap. It is also why they recommend not to swim in lenses or to always wear goggles to stop water coming into contact with the eyes and the lenses.
Conclusion
These stories can act to alarm contact lens wearers but are probably the extreme cases. However, the dangers are very real and the best approach to wearing lenses is always to follow the advice of your optician, including using the right solution and for how long a day you wear them.
