Daily Disposable Contact Lens Provides Comfort for Patients With Astigmatism

A novel, daily disposable silicone hydrogel (SiHy) contact lens (CL) with water surface technology and a modified prism ballast design may enable a comfortable wearing experience while maintaining satisfactory vision in patients with astigmatism, according to survey results published in Clinical Optometry. 

Researchers included 30 established CL wearers with bilateral astigmatism who wore CLs for at least 16 hours per day (mean age, 28.4 years; 19 women) in the open-label, prospective study. After an initial CL fitting, participants reported comfort, quality of vision, and overall satisfaction using a visual analog scale (VAS), which was scaled from 0 to 100 (0, poor; 100, excellent). Patients received follow-up surveys sent to their smartphones on 5 subsequent days, completing an initial morning assessment and reporting comfort, vision and satisfaction scores at 10, 12, 14, and 16 hours following the morning assessment. These assessments were graded on a scale of 1 to 10 (1, poor; 10, excellent).

After initially inserting the lenses, participants reported median VAS scores of 97, 100, and 96 for quality of vision, comfort, and satisfaction, respectively. During subsequent surveys, patients reported excellent median comfort and quality of vision scores after 10 hours of wear (10 for both), which declined to 8 and 9, respectively, after 16 hours of wear. Median overall end-of-survey scores were 96.5 for quality of vision, 95.0 for comfort, and 8.0 for dryness.

Mean binocular visual acuity was -0.19 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) among the cohort and lenses did not exhibit enough rotation to warrant a refitting. Among the cohort, 36 eyes (66.7%) had zero rotation, 49 (90.7%) had a rotation of 5 degrees or less, and 51 eyes (94.4%) had a rotation of less than 10 degrees, according to the report.

“This maintenance of comfort is important with soft lens wear, as discomfort with lenses in general has been targeted as the most common cause for contact lens dropout,” the study authors note. “It is likely that the water surface treatment of the study lenses are playing a role in these findings, as surface treatment of lens materials can improve lubricity of a soft contact lens, and therefore improve comfort.”

The research was limited by a small sample size and single center design. 

Disclosure: This research was supported by Alcon, Inc. One study author declared affiliations with biotech, pharmaceutical, and/or clinical research organizations. Please see the original reference for a full list of authors’ disclosures.