CONTACT LENSES TODAY

October 20, 2002

Contact Lenses Today® is edited by Dr. Joseph T. Barr and the staff of Contact Lens Spectrum. This week CLToday® reaches 8,979 readers in 74 countries.

1-800 Contacts Sues Rival
1-800 Contacts, Inc. has asked a judge to stop a rival from placing unauthorized pop-up advertisements on its Web site. 1-800 Contacts says that Vision Direct, Inc. has been inserting pop-up ads on its Web site since the summer and is suing both Vision Direct and the company Vision Direct allegedly hired to post the pop-ups, WhenU.com.

CLMA Presents Awards, Elects Officers and Board Members
At its annual meeting in Denver at the beginning of this month, the Contact Lens Manufacturers Association (CLMA) presented industry awards to four outstanding individuals. In addition to Keith S. Ames, O.D., receiving the GP Lens Practitioner of the Year Award, which we told you about last week, Robert M. Lohr, O.D., was presented with the Dr. Josef Dallos Award, Krist Jani received the Industry Enhancement Award and Adolf Wilhelm Mueller-Welt, D.O.S., was awarded the Creative Design & Process Award posthumously.

Additionally, Lee Dickerson of ABBA Optical, Inc. was elected to a one-year term as president; Jan Daniel, of Paracon, Inc., was appointed to vice president and Kevin Hing of Danker Laboratories was appointed as secretary-treasurer (both of which are also one-year terms). Board members who were elected to two-year terms are: Charles Creighton of Alden Optical Laboratories, Inc.; Richard Neilson, of PC Optical Products, Inc.; and Al Vaske of Lens Dynamics, Inc.

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Stabbing Occurs Over Contact Lenses
Unbelievable as they are, you've heard the stories about kids being attacked for their sneakers and designer clothes. Here's another unsettling account that'll take a while to sink in. In Saginaw, Michigan, a 15-year-old girl accused her 14-year-old friend of stealing her contact lenses while they were outside of their school. The dispute continued inside and the accused 14-year-old stabbed her friend in their social studies classroom. The victim suffered a single wound to the right chest area and police confiscated the knife used in the attack, along with a second found in the suspect's backpack.

Abstract: Dehydration Characteristics
In-vitro dehydration of hydrogel and silicone-hydrogel contact lens materials depends on water content. Higher water content materials have greater evaporation rates, which are further increased by increased air flow.
Jones, L; May, C; Nazar, L; and Simpson, T. In vitro evaluation of the dehydration characteristics of silicone hydrogel and conventional hydrogel contact lens materials. Contact Lens & Anterior Eye. 25:147-156 (2002).

Editor's Commentary: Educational Information Abounds
Teaching today's practitioners and students to understand aspheric contact lens optics is more important than ever. Thanks to pioneers such as optometrist/manufacturer Joe B. Goldberg and others, we have a wealth of information to teach from. This topic is more important as the prevalence of aspheric multifocal and aberration changing lenses increases. Fortunately, the manufacturing and quality control of these lenses is better than ever, not to mention that they are the most optimized, high oxygen transmission materials we can use on all patients.

Fitting Tip: Staining Night & Day Lenses
Many of you who choose CIBA's Night & Day lenses as either a bandage lens or for a piggyback system under a gas permeable lens because of their high Dk may not know that you can use regular fluorescien and not large molecule fluorescein to assess the epithelial defect or fit. I heard that this works, and when I tried it, the Night & Day didn't stain!
-- Leslie M. Coffee, O.D.
Cornea & Contact Lens Resident
Northeastern State University College of Optometry

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