Have You Ever Tried Scleral Contact Lenses?

At one point or another, anyone who wears corrective lenses is going to wonder whether or not they should make the switch from glasses to contact lenses. Glasses are an obvious (and easy) introduction to corrective lenses, but for many people, their drawbacks (however minor) add up over time.
Whereas eyeglasses require you to clean them frequently and can’t always be worn (such as out on the water or underneath a face mask), contact lenses don’t suffer from any of these limitations. For many people, contact lenses are the ideal method of vision correction.

Have You Been Told That You “Aren’t Suitable for Contact Lenses”? You Aren’t Alone.

As wonderful as contact lenses are, they too suffer from limitations. Namely:

1. They require the wearer’s eyes to be in good health. Temporary conditions, such as conjunctivitis, will prevent contacts from being comfortably worn- as will chronic diseases. Wearing contacts when you are dealing with an eye disease is certainly uncomfortable, and doing so may actually promote physical damage to the eye.

   Dry eye is another eye condition that prevents contact lenses from being worn comfortably.

2. Certain prescriptions aren’t available for standard contact lenses. People with high astigmatism, for example, can’t wear soft contact lenses as those lenses aren’t able to produce the level of correction required for clear vision. This is also true for people with severe myopia, as contact lenses lack the maximum focusing power needed to compensate for such prescriptions.

Traditionally, people that fell into the above two categories found themselves completely out of luck. Their dreams of contact lenses destroyed, those people simply resigned themselves to a life of eyeglasses (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).

Scleral Contact Lenses Are a Game Changer

While not exactly new (scleral lenses have existed in one form or another since the late 1800’s), relatively recent innovations in the space have enabled scleral lenses to be an effective and viable option for many people.

What Differentiates Scleral Contacts From Regular Contacts?

Where standard soft contact lenses rest directly on the cornea (well, on a thin film of tears on top of the cornea), scleral contact lenses are noticeably raised from the eye and rest on the sclera (the white part of your eye that surrounds the cornea).
For people with dry eye, scleral lenses can actually help decrease symptoms as the lens is filled with contact lens solution before being worn, acting as a lubricant.

Are Scleral Contact Lenses Ideal For You?

If you’ve been told that you were not a candidate for contact lenses in the past due to eye health (or another reason), scleral lenses may be the solution you’ve been waiting for. Please schedule an appointment for an evaluation/fitting. We look forward to seeing you!