Contact Lenses

Soft contact lenses are considered the most popular, most comfortable, and most frequently prescribed type of contact lens both in the United States and worldwide.

Soft contacts are available for all types of vision correction, including nearsightedness, astigmatism, and multi-focal needs. They can be worn occasionally, every day, and even overnight. They’re comfortable and tend to stay in place well, so they’re a good choice if you participate in sports or lead an active lifestyle.

Soft contact lenses are made of soft, flexible polymers that allow oxygen to pass through to the cornea. Soft contact lenses are easier to adjust to and are more comfortable than rigid gas permeable lenses. Newer soft lens materials include silicone-hydrogels to provide more oxygen to your eye while you wear your lenses and may also provide UV protection. New types of soft lenses continue to come to market as new technologies develop.

Some of the soft contact lens options available are:

• Disposable Lenses - These lenses are soft contact lenses that you wear for a limited number of days. You wear the lenses during the day and remove them at night. You use each pair of lenses for the recommended time frame, such as daily, weekly, or monthly and then discard them. Having a fresh pair of soft contacts means less chance of infection, less cleaning, and more comfort. Disposable soft contact lenses are a great solution for patients who experience dry eye, allergies and for those who only wear contacts occasionally or participate in sports.
• Daily Wear Lenses - This is a term applied to lenses that are not disposable or able to be worn while sleeping. You wear the lenses during the day from four to eighteen hours, as prescribed by your doctor, and remove them at night to be cleaned and disinfected. Typically, the same pair is worn from three months to a year, depending on the manufacturer and doctor’s recommendations. These days, daily wear contact lenses are more often used as “custom” designed contact lenses.
• Extended Wear Lenses - These are soft contact lenses that can be worn overnight, while you sleep. There are two different types of extended-wear contacts–those that can be worn consecutively for up to seven nights and those that can be worn for up to 30 nights. At the end of the prescribed wear period, they must be removed for thorough cleaning and disinfecting. It’s very important with all contacts to be cautious with overnight use, even if the lenses have been approved for extended wear since it increases the risk of eye infections.
• Color Changing Lenses - Color-enhancing contacts are available in some prescriptions and lens types to those patients who have an interest in changing the color of their eyes. Colored contacts must be prescribed by an optometrist and require a contact lens fitting even if vision correction is not needed.

If you have an astigmatism correction you may have been told in the past that you can’t wear contact lenses. Today, the truth is that there are excellent options for those patients who need astigmatism correction in their contacts.

A toric contact lens is designed to correct for astigmatism by being shaped in a particular way that provides two powers in one lens. Toric lenses must stay on your eye in a particular orientation to provide optimal vision. Contact lens manufacturers achieve this through several different design methods. For example, they may make the bottom of the lens thicker and heavier so that it is always pulled downward.

Toric contact lenses come in several forms, such as soft, extended-wear, disposable, hybrid, and rigid gas-permeable. Since the proper fitting for these contacts is especially critical, you may have to come back for several follow-ups. This means that the doctor’s fitting fees and the toric lenses themselves are often more expensive than the easier-to-fit spherical contact lenses.

Contact lens manufacturers are continuously creating new and improved contact lens designs. One of the greatest areas of improvement recently has been in multifocal contact lens designs. Patients who have presbyopia now have many multifocal contact lens options to choose from.

Multifocal contact lenses can function like bifocal lenses, providing correction for far and near, or like progressive lenses, providing correction for far, near, and intermediate. You must have a professional fitting and evaluation with an optometrist to determine which design is best for your visual needs.

Multifocal contact lenses are available in soft, extended-wear, disposable, hybrid, and rigid gas-permeable designs.

Our optometrists may recommend a different option for correcting presbyopia that does not include using a multifocal contact lens. Called monovision, this would involve wearing a contact in one eye for distance and a contact in the other eye for near. There are advantages and disadvantages to this option which can be further explained by your optometrist.

There is also the option of trying a modified monovision wherein a bifocal lens is worn in one eye and a single-vision lens is worn in the other eye. Some people who have difficulty with the previously mentioned options may choose contacts for seeing in the distance only and then put on reading glasses over their contacts, when necessary.

Rigid gas permeable contact lenses are a type of hard contact lens made of oxygen-permeable polymers that allow oxygen to pass through the lens to the eye.

Though not as common as soft contact lenses RGPs can offer many advantages to the wearer. Because they don’t contain water like soft lenses they won’t dehydrate and are less likely than soft contacts to harbor bacteria. They resist deposits, making them easier to clean and disinfect. In addition, due to the hard material, they retain their shape providing crisper vision, handle easily, and are longer lasting when compared to soft lenses.

Hybrid contact lenses consist of a central rigid material surrounded by a soft outer skirt. They are designed to provide the great, stable vision of a rigid gas permeable lens while keeping the comfort of a soft contact lens.

Hybrid contact lenses are great for people with astigmatism, presbyopia, and keratoconus. They may also work well for those currently wearing rigid gas permeable contacts who enjoy their vision but not the comfort.

SynergEyes is the leading manufacturer of an extensive line of hybrid contact lenses allowing you to enjoy the best of both worlds – a stable, high oxygen permeable rigid center that delivers consistently crisp, clear vision with the all-day comfort of a soft contact lens.