A User’s Guide to the Extended Wear Contact Lens

The extended wear contact lens is the next best thing to sliced bread if you are one of those people who require optical correction for your vision and, like me, don’t really like glasses.

Many people that I know not only oppose the idea of placing something in their eye but can’t imagine wearing something on their eye for 24 hours a day. So when they hear about the extended wear contact lens, the question most often asked is: “what are they made of?”


“Ingredients”

The extended wear contact lenses are made from highly oxygen permeable hydrophilic polymeric materials designed to be worn for long periods of time and allow more oxygen through the eye then even the disposable contact lens. They also do not dry up as quickly as normal contact lenses and the surface of the lens is biocompatible which decreases any bacteria or protein build-up on the lens. This bacteria or protein build-up is the leading cause of eye infections among contact lens wearers.

These lenses are designed to be worn from 7-30 days at a time without having to replace, clean or disinfect them. These lenses allow more oxygen to pass through to the cornea which keeps them from collecting deposits and infecting your eye with bacteria


The Comfort Factor

If you are one of those people who are scared to place something in your eye, this is a great time to try. The extended wear contact lens is very comfortable; you may even forget that you have them in your eyes. I started wearing contact lenses as soon as they were invented (I hate glasses) and at that time they only had the hard, semi soft and soft contact lenses; having tried them all and going through all the phases of eye infection due to bacteria deposits and so on I stopped at the daily disposable ones which worked great until the extended wear contact lens appeared.

These lenses are great not only for people like me who hate glasses (you still need to have a pair handy just in case) but for those who choose not to compromise their look and comfort due to vision problems.

The extended wear contact lens are great for those of us who don’t have time to waste with daily removing and cleaning your lenses, which is not very safe for the eye anyway as you get eye infection very easily in the process. People in many walks of life find it irreplaceable, like a mom who needs to wake up in the middle of the night to feed her baby or a busy business man who is always on the run.