A Proactive Practitioner

Experiencing 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE™ lenses herself made this practitioner a believer.

Cindy Szeto, OD, is a partner in a thriving practice in San Francisco, where more than one-third of her contact lens patients — most of them young professionals from the surrounding financial district — wear daily disposable lenses. In almost 20 years of practice, she had limited patient interest in color contact lenses and was skeptical when she learned Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Companies planned to launch a new “beauty” lens. “I always felt cosmetic lenses were more for teens or college students who wanted to change their eye color,” she says. “I didn’t think they would appeal to my clientele.”

As Dr. Szeto learned more about 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE™ lenses — specifically, that they’re designed to enhance an individual’s natural eye color rather than change it — she realized how different they are from color contact lenses. Once she placed them on her own eyes, she understood the impact they can have. Recently, she learned she has one of the leading practices in the country in sales of DEFINE™ lenses. She attributes this success to the fact that she proactively encourages patients to try them.

Prime Candidates

After seeing the effect of DEFINE™ lenses on her own eyes, Dr. Szeto realized she actually fits the profile of one of the prime candidates for this lens. “Those of us who put in long hours at work and have busy lives at home, particularly people who are over 40, often look tired because we are tired,” she says. “The DEFINE™ lens makes you look perkier and more alert. I’m an occasional contact lens wearer, and I make a point of wearing DEFINE™ lenses for an evening out or whenever I want to look more awake.”

Dr. Szeto suggests the 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE™ lens to most of her contact lens patients, especially patients 40 and older and patients who already wear 1-DAY ACUVUE^® MOIST lenses. “The DEFINE™ lens is based on the MOIST platform, so it’s an easy transition,” she says. “Patients already know they can wear the MOIST lens, and I’m confident that people who are comfortable in MOIST will be comfortable in DEFINE™.”

New Expectations

1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE™ lenses are the result of many years of research that started with insights from Korea, where “circle” lenses with prominent limbal rings were developed. “In Asia, everyone knows what circle lenses do and why you’d want to wear them,” Dr. Szeto says. “Here, we need to explain the new DEFINE™ lenses to patients, and this can be done quickly and easily.”

Dr. Szeto introduces the DEFINE™ lens as a fun new contact lens design and briefly describes what the lens does for the eye. “I tell patients this lens adds definition and texture to the colored part of the eye, which makes the eye look bigger and more open, and the limbal ring makes the white of the eye pop for a healthy, youthful look,” she says. “This quick and simple description helps set patients’ expectations, and then the lens fulfills them.”

Subtle Beauty

The effect of 1-DAY ACUVUE^® DEFINE™ lenses is subtler than a color change, but people do notice it. Dr. Szeto learned this first-hand while participating in a health fair, where she chatted with attendees while wearing a DEFINE™ lens on one eye and no lens on the other eye.

“After explaining what the lens was designed to do, I’d say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m wearing the lens on one eye,’” she recalls. “Although they hadn’t noticed the difference before, every person could pick out which eye wore the DEFINE™ lens. One person said she preferred the makeup on that eye and was surprised when I told her I was wearing the exact same makeup on both eyes. The effect of the lens is that subtle, but people notice the difference.”

Proactive Practice-building

As for the potential of this lens, Dr. Szeto says she thinks the DEFINE™ lens fills an unmet and previously unrecognized need. “I liken it to a cell phone that takes pictures,” she says. “We never longed for that function, but now, can you imagine if we didn’t have cameras in our phones?

“I also believe our practice’s proactive approach to introducing patients to new technology gives us an advantage,” Dr. Szeto says. “To wait for a patient to ask what’s new already puts a practice behind the curve. It’s all about letting people know what’s out there. Even if they don’t want it right now, at least they know they heard about it from you first.” ■