British Contact Lens Association

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Benefits of contact lenses

Benefits of contact lenses

Although contact lenses have been around for more than a century, the past decade has seen tremendous developments in lens materials and design to bring even greater benefits to contact lens wearers.

Today almost all eyesight problems can be corrected with contact lenses. Despite advances in spectacle technology and the advent of surgical techniques such as laser refractive surgery, contact lenses provide many advantages and are a very successful form of vision correction. New manufacturing technology has also made contact lenses more affordable than ever before.

That’s why more than 3.5 million people in the UK wear contact lenses and the number of wearers has more than doubled in recent years (see ‘Facts and stats on the UK contact lens market).

Below are some more advantages of the various types of contact lenses when compared to spectacles and refractive surgery are given in the following table (courtesy of Professor Nathan Efron and Optician).

Ask your BCLA contact lens practitioner to help you decide which type is best suited to your needs

A comparison of different forms of vision correction

Characteristic	Soft lenses	Rigid lenses	Orthokeratology	Spectacle lenses	Refractive surgery
Field of view	full	full	full	restricted	full
Stability of vision (post blink)	excellent	good	excellent	excellent	excellent
Glare	none	in low light	none	none	Some post- surgery
Glare protection tint possible	cosmetic only	no	no	yes	n/a
UV protection possible	yes	yes	no	yes	n/a
Initial comfort	good	poor	fair	good	fair
Long term comfort	good	good	excellent	good	excellent
Adaptation required	very little	yes	yes	sometimes	n/a
Suitability for intermittent use	yes	not usually	no	yes	no
Disposability viable	yes	no	n/a	no	n/a
Risk of loss	low	moderate	n/a	low	n/a
Risk of dislodgement during wear	low	moderate	nil	high	n/a
Risk of damage during wear	low	low	nil	high	Moderate (Lasik flap mislocation)
Risk of damage with handling	high	low	low	low	n/a
Ease of care	simple (nil for daily disposable)	simple	simple	simple	n/a
Initial cost	low	moderate	high	moderate	high
Ongoing costs	high	moderate	moderate	none	nil
Cost to correct astigmatism	high	low	only limited correction possible	low	high
Bifocal correction possible	compromise	very difficult	no	yes	monovision
Use in rain	good	good	excellent	poor	good
Susceptibility to fog up	no	no	no	yes	no
Susceptibility to dirt up	no	no	no	yes	no
Risk of complication	low	negligible	low	none	moderate

n/a not applicable

Girl with a contact lens

Here are our Top 10 reasons for wearing contact lenses:

Contact lenses offer natural all-round vision and enhance your appearance
Contact lenses are simple and convenient to use and expand lifestyle choices
Contact lenses have many advantages for sport and leisure activities
Contact lenses can be worn every day, part-time or just for going out and special occasions
Vision with contact lenses can be as good, or better than with spectacles
Contact lenses offer a safe, effective, stable, and reversible alternative to refractive surgery
Contact lenses can correct almost all eyesight problems and are suitable for people of all ages
Adaptation to contact lenses is rapid and trouble-free
The latest contact lenses and solutions provide excellent comfort and eye health
Some eye conditions can only be corrected with contact lenses