CONTACT LENSES TODAY

July 28, 2002

Contact Lenses Today® is edited by Dr. Joseph T. Barr and the staff of Contact Lens Spectrum. This week CLToday® reaches 8,681 readers in 74 countries.

Congress Mulls New CL Release Bill
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) recently introduced proposed legislation that would require contact lens prescribers to provide patients or their “agents” with a copy of their CL prescription. The bill also would:

Require an expiration date on prescriptions
Prohibit the sale of contact lenses to consumers with an expired prescription
Require that the prescriber be notified by a seller when a patient or his agent attempts to buy lenses and that the prescriber has sufficient time to verify or correct errors in the Rx.

UltraVision Closes Canadian Plant
UltraVision, maker of Epicon contact lenses for keratoconus, has closed its manufacturing facility in Quebec while the company evaluates restructuring scenarios. UltraVision operations in the United Kingdom and Australia are unchanged. The company says the manufacturing facility in Canada did not supply disposable lenses to UltraVision International, so the closure has no impact on operations there, and “it's business as usual for us and our customers.”

WITH THE BIOMEDICS™ TORIC LENS, it's Location, Location, Location. Plus you and your patients will prefer it for all the right reasons. But please don't take our word for it. Try it yourself. Contact your account representative at 1-800-628-5367 for more details.
For more information: http://www.ocularsciences.com)
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What Do Presbyopes Care Most About?
Being able to see well to work and drive are top priorities for presbyopes who wear multifocal contact lenses, according to a recent e-mail survey of contact lens practitioners by CIBA Vision. The practitioners also reported that at least 51% of their patients are still wearing their soft multifocal contact lenses a year after being fit, and 85% wear these lenses full-time. Why do patients drop out of multifocal CLs? The practitioners reported that poor distance vision topped the list (85%) followed by poor near vision (64%). Where do these dropouts go? Either to spectacles (48%) or monovision (45%).

Avoiding Corneal Edema in EW
Researchers in Spain studied the oxygen permeability of two extended wear (EW) hydrogel contact lenses and reported their findings in the July issue of Biomaterials. They found that lenses made of either lotrafilcon A or balafilcon A won’t induce corneal edema if the central and peripheral thickness of the lenses are thin enough to keep oxygen transmissibility above the critical level (87 barrer/cm, as stipulated by Holden and Mertz).

How to Help Aphakic Children and Their Families
Contact lenses play an important role in managing childhood aphakia, but their use and care can be challenging for parents. Researchers in Australia polled families of aphakic children to find out what problems they encountered and how they dealt with them. Here are the key factors that helped these parents cope:

Proper education of both parents and children on why the lenses are required
Awareness of problems that may occur
Strong social support network
Adequate financial aid.

The researchers reported their findings in the August issue of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology.

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, more than 300 practitioners from 22 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: Don’t Rock the Boat
I believe in two philosophies: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; and if it ain’t broke, make it better. Recently – and with the best intentions - we refit a patient who’s very dear to me with a different bifocal contact lens. She called me last night to tell me she couldn't see with it. I knew in the back of my mind we shouldn’t have changed the lens type. Now maybe we could have tweaked the prescription and made that new lens better. But she and I agreed to return to the previous lens type that she’d been happy with.

Fitting Tip: Helping Patients Relax
Any procedure that involves touching the eye or instilling drops makes most patients a little apprehensive. It helps to put patients at ease before you begin. One tactic I’ve used for years invariably gets a chuckle. Before instilling fluorescein, I tell the patient, “I'm going to put something in your eye that will make everything appear yellow for a few minutes. But don't worry, there’s no extra charge for the color.” I'm always amazed when people find this funny, but it sure does relax them!
--Robert Greenberg, O.D., F.A.A.O., Tallahassee, Fla.

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