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problems of wearing contact lenses

1 Hypersensitivity to contact lens solutions usually leads to red, irritated eyes and difficulty wearing them. Use of preservative-free solutions, or a solution with a different preservative, may be all that is necessary to correct the problem. 2 Corneal ulceration is a bacterial infection of the cornea which usually presents with a red, painful eye with discharge, and poor vision. The patient may occasionally observe a white spot on the cornea of the eye involved. Antibiotic eye-drops are administered to treat it. 3 Contact-lens protein deposits can make a lens very uncomfortable and irritating. In most cases, a new lens can solve the problem. 4 Tight contact lens syndrome occurs when a lens is ill-fitting. The wearer complains that the lens feels fine until after a few hours of using it, at which point it becomes uncomfortable. The problem resolves only when the lens is got rid of.

Rigid contact lenses can slow the development of myopia or nearsightedness in children, says an Ohio State University study.

Myopia affects approximately one out of five children and it typically develops between eight and 16. The disorder is often found to worsen rapidly and in rare cases severe myopia can even cause problems like detached retina and blindness.

To check whether contact lenses have any significant effect on childhood myopia, optometrist Jeffrey Walline and his colleagues at the Ohio State University spent three years examining 116 children ? aged between eight and 16 ? who were assigned to wear either hard or soft lenses. The kids were given vision tests at the beginning of the study and again at the end. All the children had low to moderate myopia at the start of the study.

The vision tests showed that the children who wore rigid lenses had a slower progression of myopia. Also, the use of such lenses kept their cornea from ?steepening? into the egg-shape, a characteristic advancement of nearsightedness.

?The results provide information for eye care practitioners to share with their patients, but they do not indicate that hard lenses should be prescribed for myopia control,? the authors wrote in the Archives of Ophthalmology. They also noted that rigid lenses are healthier for the eye because they allow more oxygen to get to the cornea than most soft lenses. Besides, hard lenses are also less expensive, costing about two-third of the soft lenses.