THE MANIPULATION OF SOFT CONTACT LENSES
Putting contact lenses on the eyes is putting a foreign body on the most sensitive and delicate part of the body.
Soft contact lenses are manufactured with very advanced techniques and highly biocompatible material of excellent quality. They are used, daily, by millions of people, since the 1970’s, without problem in the vast majority of the cases. A small minority gets complications, sometimes serious ones.
In order to increase the probability of a long term and uneventful use of these lenses, it is advisable to follow the next steps and rules.
Prepare on a clean, dust free and well illuminated table, paper handkerchiefs, clean cotton swabs, a magnifying mirror, a bottle of disinfecting alcohol and the contact lens case.
Putt the right lens case on your right side and the left lens case on your left side to avoid confusion.
Then, wash thoroughly, with soap and water, your hands and the dry them with a clean, dust and fluff free towel.
Soak generously by the disinfecting alcohol a paper handkerchief, clean the contact lens case and your fingers with it and wait, without touching anything, until your fingers get dry.
Open the lens case, look to the profile of the contact lens and make sure that its edges are vertical. If not, revert the contact lens, with the cotton swab (not the fingers), before proceeding to the next step.
Always with the cotton swab, take off the contact lens from its case and put its convex face on the pulp of your index. Now, with both major fingers placed on the roots of the eyelashes, spread your eyelids apart and, with the head tilted towards the mirror, look to your index pushing cautiously the contact lens over your cornea.
If the contact lens falls, bends or turns upside down, soak it again with its product or with physiologic water and restart the whole manipulation.
To take the contact lens off, follow the same preliminary hygienic precautions. Afterwards, with the head tilted towards the mirror, both eyes looking at themselves in it and the eyelids separated maximally with the majors, press gently, with the pulps of the index and the thumb, the inferior edge of the coloured part of the eye in order to bend gently the contact lens and remove it out.
If you wear monthly-disposable contact lenses, wipe, every day, with disinfectant alcohol the contact lens case and change, every month, both of the contact lens case and the cleaning product.
- Pay attention! The use of tight swimming goggles is mandatory during any swimming.
- Pay attention! Never should you keep more than 10 minutes a contact lens causing any abnormal sign (discomfort, tearing, secretions, sensitivity to light, redness etc.), were they mild! In such a case, take them off, soak them in physiologic water and put them on again. If the abnormal sign(s) do(es) not disappear, discard the contact lens and put a new one on. If this replacement does not resolve the problem, do not put on any contact lens and ask for an emergency appointment by Dr SAFFIEDINE.