Contact lens wearers also need an annual eye examination in order to check the integrity of your cornea, the front layer of our eye that you put the contact lens on, covering it the whole day when you put them on. If you feel discomfort, eye appears reddish, stinging sensation, or grittiness, you may be having dry eyes in which we will do a fluorescein test (or dye test) to detect for any defect/dry spot on the surface on your cornea.
Cornea has no blood vessel on it. So, it gets oxygen supply from our environment. When we have contact lenses wrapped on our cornea, especially beyond office hours, our cornea will not have enough oxygen since the lens has already dried out. This is the time in which cornea will get oxygen from surrounding blood vessel. Sometimes, we tend to see redness on the white part of eyes of contact lens wearer, and this is the sign telling us that the cornea is suffocating from lack of oxygen.
We prescribe contact lens based on your purpose & preference of contact lens wear.
Do you want to wear clear lens or colour lens?
Clear lens is transparent, so it will not be noticeable on your eye. Colour lens will cosmetically enhance your eyes, by colours and/or big eye effect.
What purpose do you want to wear contact lens? Wear for work or wear just for a specific function/dinner?
If you want to wear for work, you may get monthly disposable lens in which you can wear for one month. This is cost effective for those who want to use contact lens to work for 5 – 6 days in a week. If you just want to wear lens for function/dinner or even sports, daily disposable is a better choice in which you simply remove the lenses & throw them at end of day. You don’t need to buy contact lens solution as well. As you don’t want to be soaking the lens in your lens casing for numerous days and just wear them just a day or two in a week. And you don’t want to be using the same solution that you have opened many months back and still unfinished.
How long you want to wear them? Office hours or wear one whole day?
If you want to wear during office hours 8-10 hours, then basic material (hydrogel lens) is fine for you. But if you want to wear your lenses beyond 12 hours, we highly recommend wearing high oxygen lens (silicone hydrogel lens) that will ensure your eyes getting enough oxygen needed during extended hours. We will also recommend high oxygen lens for high power wearer as they tend to wear the lens the whole day right in the morning until before sleep.
We have soft lens as well as hard lens. The ready lenses that you get from an optical practice is of soft lens to cover your shortsighted power only.
When soft lens cannot give good vision due to significant astigmatism, then we have soft toric lens to cover your astigmatism power. When soft lens cannot give you good near vision due to starting to have reading power, usually around age of 45, then we have multifocal lens that enables you from seeing far to seeing near comfortably. For very high astigmatism power in which good vision cannot be attained by spectacle lenses/soft toric lens, we will propose hard lens to you.
Therefore, annual eye examination allows us to assess the health of your cornea especially if you are a full-time contact lens wearer. You are a contact lens wearer, and you find your vision/lens comfort is no longer satisfactory, please be in touch with us for an eye examination.