CONTACT LENSES TODAY

June 30, 2002

Contact Lenses Today® is edited by Dr. Joseph T. Barr and the staff of Contact Lens Spectrum. This week CLToday® reaches 8,581 readers in 74 countries.

CIBA and B&L Head-to-Head in Patent Suit
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware has ruled in favor of CIBA Vision’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Wesley Jessen Corporation, in a patent infringement lawsuit filed against Bausch & Lomb last year. CIBA Vision claimed that B&L’s PureVision lens infringes WJ’s patent, which covers various silicone hydrogel materials. The court affirmed that the patent is valid, enforceable and infringed, and it ordered B&L to stop making and selling PureVision lenses until the patent expires in 2005.

The District Court denied B&L’s request for a stay of the injunction, clearing the way for the company to file an immediate request for a stay with the Court of Appeals. Other legal actions are proceeding in courts in Georgia and New York involving various patents held by both companies on contact lens materials and processes.

Continuous Wear on the Rise
Demand for continuous wear contact lenses is increasing dramatically, says CIBA Vision, which reports shipping 850,000 Focus Night & Day trial lenses since the beginning of 2002. The company will double current production of the lenses by August and nearly quintuple production by 2004.

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(For more information: http://www.ocularsciences.com/)
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Taking the ‘Rigid’ Out of RGPs
It’s official. After some debate, the Contact Lens Manufacturers Association (CLMA) has renamed rigid gas permeable contact lenses. The group now refers to RGPs as oxygen permeable or GP lenses. The CLMA says the new name is more descriptive for patients, who often don’t realize that today’s GPs let oxygen pass through unlike the polymethylmethacrylate lenses of the 1950s. For more information, visit http://www.clma.net/.

Customizing CLs with Wavefront Technology
Will wavefront technology give us more options for custom contact lenses? Some industry-watchers think so. Bausch & Lomb has developed a process for taking wavefront measurements and sending them electronically to a manufacturing site, where the wavefront analysis guides production. The challenge is to make the process practical and affordable, say researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events).

Hair Care Before Eye Care?
Last year, Americans spent more than $4.5 billion on hair care and $3.3 billion on oral hygiene, compared to only $900 million on eye care, according to AC Nielsen. And a recent national survey, conducted by RoperASW, found that:

Less than half of Americans have their eyes checked annually.
Only 15% of Americans believe that they’re very knowledgeable about maintaining good eye health.
Some 90% of those polled have never spoken to their eyecare professional about all of the available vision correction options.
And 75% were unfamiliar with the benefits of gas permeable contact lenses.

To educate the public, Bausch & Lomb is sponsoring the Healthy Vision Campaign (http://www.healthy-vision.com/), which is supported by Prevent Blindness America. The campaign features free vision screenings at Borders bookstores across the country this summer.

REGISTER NOW FOR GLOBAL ORTHO-K SYMPOSIUM
The first annual Global Orthokeratology Symposium will take place in Toronto, Canada, from Aug. 9 to 11, 2002. Hosted by Contact Lens Spectrum and the BCI Health Care Conference Group, the symposium will focus on fitting concepts, lens designs and patient management techniques. Sessions will feature clinical outcomes, patient selection, on-eye fittings and an international free paper section. Already, practitioners from 18 countries have registered for this truly international conference. For more information, call (800) 549-3656; e-mail info@healthcareconferencegroup.com; or log on to http://www.healthcareconferencegroup.com/.
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Editor's Commentary: You Are Our Best Resource
Obtaining good, generic fitting tips to share with you each week is always a challenge. Ideally, the tip of the week is a forum for all of you to help your colleagues. In that spirit, Dr. Ed Bennett and his RGPLI advisory group will be sending us their best GP fitting tips periodically. Thanks to all of you who have sent tips in the past. And to all our readers, keep those great tips coming.

Fitting Tip: Keeping the Eye Clean and Fresh
I recommend that all patients rinse their eyes with sterile saline or a good eye drop before applying their contact lenses. This assures that they get off to a good start with an eye area that’s clean and fresh. How many times have you heard patients remark that their vision is blurred when they first put their lenses on, but the blur dissipates as the day goes on? Doubtless, they placed a lens on an eye loaded with mucus or other debris.
--Alfred Gabler, O.D. (fitting contact lenses since 1949)

Send your favorite tips to tips@cltoday.com -- if your tip is selected as 'Best of the Month,' you'll receive a free golf shirt (see http://www.cltoday.com/ for details). Please include your full name, degree or title and city/state/country.

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