Contact Lenses: Their Advantages and Disadvantages Vs. Conventional Eyeglasses

When my daughter pressed earnestly for me to switch to contact lenses from my regular eyeglasses about a year ago, I was rather hesitant. This should be quite understandable for me as well as for the many other people who grew up prior to the advent of contact lenses, when these became widely prescribed and accepted alternatives to the conventional eyeglasses.

My hesitation then was mainly because I still had in mind the complaints of discomfort from wearers of the early forms of contact lenses which were made of hard plastic. My daughter had to do a brief discourse, telling me that what's retained in my mind is no longer true considering that the newer forms of contact lenses are more comfortable and less irritating to wear. The newer forms of contact lenses include those with soft lenses, which are more easily tolerated when worn. There are also the types that are made of gas-permeable hard lenses, which permit oxygen to reach the eye's cornea; these are what I'm using today.

The popularity of contact lenses is due to several advantages they have over using conventional eyeglasses. To begin with, many people prefer the way they look wearing contact lenses than when they have their eyeglasses on. Unlike eyeglasses which tend to form steam easily, contact lenses stay clear even with long, uninterrupted use. Again unlike eyeglasses which are "fixed," contact lenses move with the eyes and offer a broader field of clear vision. A significant advantage of contact lenses is that they remedy many vision problems more effectively than regular eyeglasses do.

But as in most other things, contact lenses have their own disadvantages, too. Foremost of these is that it takes some time to adapt to contact lenses; learning how to properly insert and remove them takes a considerable amount of practice. Compared to regular eyeglasses, contact lenses need to be handled more carefully, especially those made of soft lenses which tear easily. With the nature and size of contact lenses, they are much easier to be mislaid. Of course, contact lenses command a price higher than the regular eyeglasses'; on top of the price of the lenses, you will have to spend for the cost of the necessary adjustments, accessories or fittings, and cleaning materials.

Now for the cleaning part. It is decidedly more difficult to care for contact lenses. Whether you are using daily-wear soft lenses or gas-permeable hard lenses, you must remove and clean them every day. In fact, most optometrists suggest that even extended-wear contact lenses - those that have been certified for use for up to four weeks without interruption - should be removed for cleaning at least once a week.

The difficulty in cleaning contact lenses lies in carefully following certain hygienic procedures. For my contact lenses which, by the way, are the easiest to care for, the optometrist recommended the following series of cleaning steps after every use: wash them with a cleaning solution; using saline solution, rinse them off; finally, store them in soaking solution. Before reusing contact lenses, a wetting solution should be applied to moisten them.

In the case of soft lenses, mere washing and rinsing with solution are often not enough; they need to be sterilized after each use. Sterilizing soft lenses can be done either by immersing them for several hours in a sterilizing solution, or by placing them in a small piece of heating apparatus for an hour. Deviating from the cleaning method recommended by your optometrist can damage your contact lenses. Optometrists also require that you replace soft lenses every year. This is because soft lenses lose their clarity, as well as their ability to admit the passage of oxygen to the cornea, as they age.

If you are considering switching from eyeglasses to contact lenses, ask your optometrist to make plain to you all the advantages and disadvantages in greater detail. [Read the Original Article]