contact lens focus

A Win-Win Lens

Lens meets practitioner and patient requirements.

VICTORIA L. DZURINKO, O.D., F.A.A.O.

A successful, and therefore, profitable contact lens is one that meets our safety requirements and our patients' comfort and convenience needs. One such lens: the Air Optix Night & Day Aqua, from CIBA Vision.

High safety profile

More than half of patients nap in their lenses at least once a month. Over wear can cause corneal hypoxia complications, which not only threaten our patients' health, but as a result, their satisfaction with lens wear. This, in turn, threatens our contact lens practice's financial health.

The Air Optix Night & Day Aqua monthly replacement lens combines the highly oxygen permeable lotrafilcon A material with a smooth, biocompatible, permanent plasma-coated surface, which resists lipid deposition. This surface is combined with the company's new Aqua Moisture System, which gives the lens a 22° contact wetting angle, allowing the eyelid to move smoothly across the lens' surface. Also, the lens has a Dk/t of 151 at −3.00D, providing high oxygen levels even to the peripheral cornea and limbus. And, extensive postmarket study showed its high safety profile when worn for 30 continuous days.¹

Patient comfort

“Sarah,” a 25-year-old white female, recently presented for a yearly contact lens exam. She wore a two-week replacement silicone hydrogel lens. She said her average lens wear was 14 hours per day and admitted to sleeping in her lenses one to two days per week. She reported “good” vision with the lens, though mentioned end-of-day dryness and redness, which she said occurred throughout her entire two-week wearing period. Upon hearing these complaints, I offered to refit her in Air Optix Night & Day Aqua and explained how the aforementioned attributes of the lens would provide her with increased comfort, minimizing and, perhaps, even ending her complaints. I gave “Sarah” a trial pair and scheduled her for a one-week follow-up appointment.

When she returned, she reported no longer experiencing end-of-day dryness and redness and had in fact been wearing her Air Optix Night & Day trial lenses continuously since her last appointment.

Convenience

Many Air Optix Night & Day Aqua patients say they greatly appreciate its monthly replacement schedule because coinciding lens replacement with monthly car or mortgage payments, for instance, makes it a convenient option. Because this convenience instills patient compliance to the manufacturer's recommended replacement schedule, the lens offers an additional buffer of ocular safety.

Because the Air Optix Night & Day Aqua enables us to provide patients with a safe option in contact lens wear while meeting our patient's requirements of comfort and convenience, it's become a successful, and, as a result, profitable part of my contact lens arsenal. OM

1. Bergenske P, Long B, Dillehay S, et al. Long-term clinical results: 3 years of up to 30-night continuous wear of lotrafilcon A silicone hydrogel and daily wear of low-Dk/t hydrogel lenses. Eye Contact Lens. 2007 Mar;33(2):74-80.