In today’s day and age we often times are looking for the healthiest, safest, and the easiest way of doing things in life as well as with our health care and when it comes to wearing contact lenses, I feel that the best way for us to do that is to wear daily disposable contact lenses. Now over the years daily disposable contact lenses have been perceived as the healthiest way to wear contact lenses but they’ve also been perceived as being very expensive. We’d like to talk about five reasons why despite the cost effectiveness daily disposable contact lenses we should have all patients and all people out there wearing daily disposable contact lenses.
#1 They’re Healthier
The number one reason why we should have our patients wearing daily disposable contact lenses is because they’re healthier.In fact if I asked a group of practitioners as I have done around the world what’s the healthiest way for patients to wear contact lenses, every single one of them has said daily disposable lenses, over monthly or two weeks and any other replacement.And so with overwhelming concern and overwhelming perception that daily disposable are the healthiest, really we should move all patients into them if we can. Now why is it that they are healthy? Well obviously because we’re getting a fresh, clean, healthy, and brand new lens every single day.Patients also don’t have the opportunity to be as non compliant. In fact most patients that are in daily disposables are far more compliant, about ninety three percent compliant with daily disposables. Give that versus a two week disposable where it’s only fifty percent of patients being compliant as far as how they replace their lenses. So the number one reason why is that it’s healthy. Over the years we’ve seen in our office far fewer infections or office visits related to patients having health problems with their contact lenses once we switched them over to daily disposables. So for no other reason the number one reason is because they’re healthier.
#2 They’re More Comfortable
The number two reason why a patient should be wearing daily disposable lenses is because they’re more comfortable. Now when we look at dropout rates, over the years they haven’t significantly changed.In fact in the United States right now only about thirty percent of all patients are wearing daily disposables. We asked this question about dropouts and about comfort is the way we could change these numbers by having all patients, every person out there wearing a daily disposable. I think that we could. I think we could make a difference not just in the short term but over the years and years and years of patients wearing contact lenses. You see there’s been some pretty significant alterations and changes to the technology of daily disposables over the years. Back when I first graduated optometry school, we only had one or two options available but over the last ten years most of the innovations in contact lens technology has focused on the surface as well as the health of daily disposables. Thus, making them far more comfortable. When I asked my patients when their lenses are more comfortable at day one or day thirty all of them report that their lenses are far more comfortable when they get a brand new lens. So I ask them imagine you could have that feeling every single day and how good would that be. Most of them are very very eager to try daily disposable lenses so long as we can discuss the cost with them which gets us to the number three.
#3 They’re More Cost Effective
The third reason why all patients should be in daily disposable lenses is because they’re more cost effective. Yes I said it. It’s less expensive for a patient to wear daily disposables than it is for a monthly or two weeks.Now obviously on you a lot of pushback on this one but hear me out every practitioner that’s out there wants their patient to be compliant to do what they’re supposed to do. Which means that in a monthly disposable lens you replace your lens, every month or every two weeks also you’re cleaning your lenses the way that you’re supposed to and quite frankly hardly anybody cleans their lenses the way they’re supposed to. Let me tell you what it takes to clean a contact lens. If you read the package insert, nearly any soft contact lens that is out there kind of silly these but any of them that are out there are suppo
sed to fill the whole case with solution and then rinse each side of the lens for five seconds. Let’s just do that for five seconds one, two, three, four, five. We’re doing that four times, top and bottom of the right lens, top and bottom left lens. Now at the end of the day you’ve used between one or two ounces of solution. Most bottles are ten ounces meaning you are going through a bottle or two a week and you know probably about three to four bottles a month at ten dollars each. You can see how easily you are into the three to five hundred dollar range for solution if a person is using their lenses like they’re supposed to and cleaning them like they’re supposed to. Now add on top of that the cost of a monthly disposables contact lenses or two week replacement lens maybe two to three hundred dollars for a year’s supply for going rebates and then you add in what it’s going to cost for a daily disposable between five and seven hundred dollars depending on the lens you’re right neck and neck and maybe even saving the money for a patient who wears the lenses occasionally rather than every single day. So there could be definitely be an argument made that the more cost effective but add into that the additional potential risks that a patient would have of not wearing their lenses and having infections of potentially having to not wear their lenses like they’re wanting to, you can see how daily disposable lenses can certainly there can be an argument made that they’re more cost effective for patients.
#4 Better for Dry Eye
The number four reason why we would suggest that patients use daily disposable lenses is because they’re better for dry eye patients. Now as we’ve discussed patients need to be cleaning their lenses and they need to be replacing that was appropriately the surface of the eye for dry eye patients is already compromised many of these patients who want to be comfortable with their lenses all day struggle because they already have dry eye in fact the top two reasons why people drop out of lenses is because of discomfort and dryness and so if we get a patient into a lens that we don’t have to worry about compliance is by which that patients very likely going to be more comfortable throughout the day add into that the chemicals that go into cleaning and disinfecting lens and that potentially can compromise a patient throughout the day or compromised or to your film one of their ocular surface and so we would suggest for any patient that they not have preservatives or any type of chemicals come in contact with their lenses if at all possible for daily disposable patients that works out really easy so we find that they work better for patients who have dry eye in the fact of the matter is most people do because we’re not blinking the right way.
#5 Parameters Available
The fifth reason why patients should be wearing daily disposable contact lenses is because of the parameters available.We’ve made some significant shifts over the last couple of years to make lenses more breathable. Nearly all of the companies that are out there now have a silicone gel high end breathable daily disposable lens on the market so moving patients into a healthier lens, it’s available. For astigmatism patients, almost everybody is able to go into an astigmatism daily disposable lens with the exception of those with really really high parameters of astigmatism and also for patients with Presbyopia. Whether you’re forty or fifty or sixty no matter what your age, now we have lenses that are available that fit those patients that are daily disposable aware that want to wear them and that have Presbyopic correction. Whether your patients are needing a lens in a high powered, whether the patients are needing presbyopic, whether the patients are needing astigmatism we now have lenses that can fit nearly everyone.
Those five reasons are the reasons we think you should move your patients or for yourself ask your eye doctor about how you can get into daily disposable contact lenses to make your overall lens wearing experience more comfortable, more healthier and more cost effective regardless of the parameters that you have in overwhelmingly, we think you’ll be better off as a contact lens wearer.
