Contact Lenses – Optometrist Hurstville

Visit us in-store at 209 Forest Road, Hurstville, NSW, 2220 to view our range of contact lenses. Alternatively contact us for any enquiries.

What are Contact Lenses?

Contact lenses are tiny lenses inserted directly into the eye’s surface. Contact lenses are ocular prosthetic devices approximately 150 million individuals use for vision correction, aesthetic or therapeutic purposes. Prescription contact lenses, like eyeglasses, treat visual impairments caused by refractive defects. A refractive mistake occurs when the eye fails to correctly refract (bend or focus) light entering the eye, resulting in a fuzzy picture.

Contact Lens Types

Hard Lens

A rigid gas-permeable (RGP) lens is the most common form of hard contact lens. These lenses are often constructed of a combination of plastic and other materials. They maintain their structure while allowing oxygen to pass through the lens to your eye.

RGP lenses are very beneficial for patients who suffer from astigmatism and keratoconus. When the cornea is irregularly bent, they give sharper vision than soft lenses. People who suffer from allergies or have protein deposits on their contacts may benefit from RGP lenses.

What are the advantages of hard contact lens?

• Outstanding vision
• Short adaptation time
• Wearable and comfortable
• Most eyesight issues can be resolved.
• Simple to put on and maintain
• Available in tints (for easier handling) and bifocals.
• Myopia management and corneal refractive treatment are also options.

What are the disadvantages of hard contact lens?

• Consistent wear is required to sustain adaptability.
• It can easily stray from the centre of the eye when compared to other types.
• Debris may sometimes slip behind the lenses.
• Regular office visits for follow-up treatment are required.

Soft Lens

Because they store more water, soft lenses are more comfortable than hard lenses. Many soft contact lenses provide UV protection as well. They are often disposable and may be discarded after a brief usage time, typically every two to four weeks or days, depending on the lens prescribed. Having a new set of lenses means reduced possibility of infection, less cleaning, and better comfort, particularly for those whose eyes naturally create more protein, which clouds lenses. They are as follows:

• Daily use contacts: These are worn while awake and removed before sleep. Many are disposable, so you must wear a new set of contacts daily. Alternatively, you might go for contacts that last longer and only need to be updated once a week, every two weeks, or once a month. Some ophthalmologists prescribe disposable daily use contacts if you use contacts once in a while.
• Extended wear contacts:  may be used when sleeping. However, you must remove them for cleaning at least once a week. Eye physicians less often recommend these contacts since they raise the risk of a severe eye infection.
• Toric contacts: may help persons with astigmatism correct their vision, although not as successfully as hard contact lenses. You may use toric lenses on a daily or prolonged basis. However, they are often more expensive than other forms of soft contact lenses.
• Coloured (tinted) contacts: Contact lenses that correct vision may be coloured to affect the colour of your eyes. They are available as daily wear, extended wear, and toric lenses. Decorative (cosmetic) contacts modify the appearance of your eyes but do not correct your eyesight.

What are the advantages of soft lens?

• Less time is needed to become acclimated to wearing them.
• Improved wearing comfort
• There is less of a sense of a foreign object.
• Wearing may be easy.
• Excellent adherence

What are the disadvantages of soft lens?

• Cleaning is more expensive.
• Reduced useful life
• When there is corneal irregularity, the optical quality suffers.

Prescription Lens Types

• Single-vision lenses: These lenses may assist a patient in perceiving one distance, close, middle, or far away.
• Progressive lenses: enable you to see at different distances without removing your glasses or switching them for another.
• Bifocal lenses: enable the wearer to see well up close and clearly at a distance. However, there is no transition or intermediate length between them. This is great for those who can’t see long or short distances but can see OK at close range.
• Active lenses: are often given to youngsters and individuals with an active lifestyle. This lens is smaller and lighter than typical lenses but is also more durable and less prone to fracture or shatter if dropped, sat on, or walked on.
• High-index lenses: suit folks who need strong prescriptions but want something thinner and lighter.

When should a contact lens be changed?

• Disposable lenses must be changed every two weeks.
• The proposed lifetime for frequent replacement lenses is monthly or quarterly.
• Replace traditional (reusable) lenses every six months or longer.
• Purchase a new pair of contact lenses before your current ones expire.
• Finally, do what is suggested to you by your optometrist.

Popular contact lens brands

Acuvue, Dailies, Air Optix, Biofinity, and SofLens are some of the most popular contact lens brands.

Because of their comfort, Bausch & Lomb, ULTRA Contact Lenses have been a popular option. They’re constructed of silicone hydrogel, which keeps eyes moist and enables more oxygen to get through than other materials.

When deciding between the Acuvue Oasys and the Air Optix Plus HydraGlyde lenses, you’ll discover they both have exceptional attributes. However, when compared, Air Optix Plus HydraGlyde offers lesser pricing.

On the other hand, Acuvue wins in terms of simplicity of use. Acuvue soft contact lenses contain a 1,2,3 indication and a blue handling tint, making them simpler to apply than others.

The Origin of Contact Lenses

Leonardo da Vinci drew and described numerous types of contact lenses in 1508 but did not create a lens or apparatus. Others then described or proposed crude types of corneal contact lenses. However, it wasn’t until 1887 that a German glassblower called F.E. Muller created the first apparatus that could cover the eye and be accepted. Then, in 1929, a Hungarian physician called Joseph Dallos discovered a technique of obtaining moulds from live eyes to make lenses more precisely adhere to the ocular curvatures.

Contact lenses as we know them were not invented until 1936 when a New York ophthalmologist named William Feinbloom created the first American-made contact lenses and used plastic lenses.

Otto Wichterle of Czechoslovakia invented the material used in the first soft lenses in 1960. It was a smooth, hydrophilic (water-absorbing) plastic known as polymacon at the time.

Bausch & Lomb, Inc. introduced soft contact lens technology globally in 1971. The Bausch & Lomb Soflens® was the brand name for the lenses.

The first rigid gas permeable lens (RGP) was introduced in 1979, made from a co-polymer of PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate, often known as Plexiglas) and silicone.The introduction of Acuvue disposable soft lenses to the market in 1987 by Vistakon, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson corporation, further altered the contact lens industry. Disposable soft lenses enhanced patient comfort and convenience and decreased ocular problems. The best soft lenses on the market now are all disposable.