Background:
Daily wear soft contact lenses are the type of eye contact lenses that people typically wear during the day time. These lenses are soft and flexible to the touch and are made of materials such as silicone and hydrogel (Eyeglass World), contributing to the characteristic of the lens molding to the shape of the wearers’ eyes once they are put in. This variation of lenses are more traditional and well-known than ortho-k lenses. From personal experience, my eye contact lens trial assistant gave the analogy of contact lenses being a pair of shoes. It makes sense to wear your shoes when you wake up and go outside during the day, but it would not make sense to wear your shoes. Although it may be common sense to some that daily wear soft contact lenses may be the answer, let’s hold off on making fast assumptions and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this variation.
Advantages:
General advantages to wearing daily wear soft contact lenses include not worrying about needing to get a certain amount of sleep to be able to see well the following day. Ortho-k lenses require the wearer to sleep a certain number of hours for them to see, approximately six to eight hours (Optimum Vision Care). If the wearer does not sleep the instructed number, the person will have fuzzy or blurry vision and will not be able to see as clearly as they would have if they wore the contacts longer. However, with soft contact lenses, the wearer can put them in whenever they wake up, no matter the amount of sleep they got, and switch to glasses freely during the day.
To give more scientific evidence to the advantages of wearing daily contacts, one study was performed to see and assess the visual acuity, perceptions of vision that affects quality of life, and symptoms of wearing daily wear soft contact lenses (SCL) and overnight corneal reshaping (OCR). From performing the randomized crossover clinical trial, subjects noted that SCL gave better visual acuity (vision sharpness measured from the ability to see letters or numbers from a distance) and less trouble with glare than OCR lenses (Lipson, Sugar, Musch). While some may not trust this experiment that much due to having only a pool of 81 enrolled patients, it is not low to the point where it is suspicious, and the experimenters do a good job of having their subjects be randomized.
In another experiment, the scientists conducted the study in order to examine the various impacts of wearing the two types of contact lenses that it had on eyes and their alignment, nearsightedness, or other issues affecting the eyes (Gifford, Gifford, Hendicott, Schmid). This study included subjects that were approximately the age of 25.8 plus or minus 3.2 years in age, which includes those in the young adult age and most likely some of the readers. By keeping this study’s credibility and relatability in mind, hopefully it will have an impact on readers’ assessment of these two contact lenses’ effectiveness and quality. One conclusion the scientists made that revealed an advantage of SCL contacts was that it led to less exophoria, or the tendency for eyes to drift away from each other (Healthline).
Besides the clear health benefits in wearing soft contacts, it gives people more assurance in choosing soft contacts over ortho-k lenses because soft contacts are more popular and traditional. Therefore, people will feel they are safer to use than ortho-k lenses, since there are fewer severe incidents that occurred. For example, in Hong Kong, the researchers sent out surveys to Hong Kong optometrists to assess what kinds of contact lenses their patients wear. The purpose was to see what percentage of people wear a certain type contact lenses between the period of 2007 to 2008. Once the results were taken a look at and analyzed, it revealed that most residents use soft contacts over other types of contact lenses (Charm, Cheung, Cho). Although the Hong Kong population may not be similar to the readers’ demographics, Hong Kong is a densely populated region, an example of a large pool of people in the world, and are technologically advanced.
Disadvantages:
In comparison to ortho-k lenses, soft contacts are worn during the day, which means the wearer will not be contact-free like ortho-k wearers are. Further disadvantages of soft contact lenses are equivalent to the advantages of ortho-k lenses, since the soft contacts do not have the same health benefits. These disadvantages of soft contacts and advantages of ortho-k lenses can be read in the other blog post on ortho-k lenses.
Works Cited:
Chang, Julia. “Orthokeratology – FAQ.” Optimum Vision Care, 2012,
Charm, Jessie, et al. “Practitioners’ Analysis of Contact Lens Practice in Hong Kong.” Contact
Lens and Anterior Eye, vol. 33, no. 3, June 2010, pp. 104–111., doi:10.1016/j.clae.2010.02.001.
Gifford, Kate, et al. “Near Binocular Visual Function in Young Adult Orthokeratology versus
Soft Contact Lens Wearers.” Contact Lens and Anterior Eye, vol. 40, no. 3, 2017, pp. 184–189., doi:10.1016/j.clae.2017.01.003.
“Learn About Contact Lenses: What Are Contacts Made of?” Eye Glass World,
Lipson, Michael J., et al. “Overnight Corneal Reshaping versus Soft Disposable Contact Lenses:
Vision-Related Quality-of-Life Differences From a Randomized Clinical Trial.” Optometry and Vision Science, vol. 82, no. 10, Oct. 2005, pp. 886–891., doi:10.1097/01.opx.0000180818.40127.dc.
Wells, Diana. “Exophoria.” Edited by Debra Sullivan, Healthline, 2018,
www.healthline.com/health/exophoria#exophoria-vs-exotropia.\
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