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Survey: Majority of contact lens wearers satisfied with vision
However, a considerable percentage of surveyed patients reported dry eye symptoms and difficulty driving at night.
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CHICAGO — Preliminary results of a large patient survey show high self-reported satisfaction from contact lenses, a speaker said here.
“This is important because it identifies areas that we need to improve in our contact lenses and solutions. If we don’t ask these questions, we won’t know what we have to fix,” Francis W. Price Jr., MD, said at the joint meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology.
The ongoing survey was designed to compare patient satisfaction with LASIK and contact lenses.
“It’s not to make one look good and one look bad,” Price, an OSN Cornea/External Disease Board Member, said. “But it has established a new benchmark to compare LASIK with a popular alternative rather than a hypothetical perfect eye. … There’s no perfect method of correcting myopia, astigmatism or hyperopia. Glasses, contact lenses, laser refractive surgery, even going bare all have side effects and things you might not want.”
Price said the bar has been raised for LASIK, with the expectation that an eye undergoing LASIK should be comparable to an emmetropic, non-operated eye with no comorbidities.
Francis W. Price
“It’s actually part of a trend, I think, in our whole society to demand perfection in medical results, pharmaceuticals, general manufacturing, even general sales,” Price said.
Patients and methods
The prospective, multicenter, Internet-based study included almost 1,700 patients who self-reported outcomes from LASIK and contact lenses. All patients were between the ages of 18 years and 60 years and required some type of vision correction. Patients with keratoconus, abnormal corneal topography and previous multifocal treatment were excluded.
The study included almost 1,000 LASIK patients and almost 700 contact lens patients. About 1,300 patients wore contact lenses at baseline; this included prospective LASIK patients, Price said.
LASIK patients were enrolled preoperatively and will be surveyed at 1, 2 and 3 years after surgery. Contact lens wearers were surveyed at baseline and will be polled at 1, 2 and 3 years.
Average manifest refraction was –3.5 D, ranging from +3 D to –11 D.
“Most of the participants had been wearing contacts for over 5 years because for our contact lens group, we only want successful contact lens wearers who have worn their lenses for at least 5 years,” Price said.
Most contact lens wearers wore soft lenses, about half extended wear and the other half daily wear. Few patients wore rigid lenses or other types.
Contact lens data
Study results showed that 93% of patients said they would recommend contact lenses to a family member.
“This included contact lens wearers who went on to have LASIK, so the majority of people that wear contacts and had LASIK were happy or satisfied with their contact lenses to the point that they would recommend them to a family member,” Price said.
However, despite the high satisfaction rate, contact lens wearers had some complaints involving visual symptoms. For example, 13% of contact lens wearers had moderate to severe difficulty with night driving; about half of the group reported having some night driving problems.
Results showed that 55% of patients reported intermittent dry eye symptoms and 6% reported very frequent or chronic dry eye in the week before being surveyed.
Twenty-eight percent of patients had intermittent symptoms of dry, irritated eyes that limited their contact lens use; 17% of patients had frequent dry eye symptoms that hampered contact lens wear.
Forty-six percent of patients reported that feelings of dry, irritated eyes affected both their vision and comfort, while 26% reported that dry, irritated eyes affected neither vision nor comfort.
“Dry eyes were more prevalent in the contact lens wearers who were going on to have LASIK than those staying in contacts, but the difference between groups was not large,” Price said.
Investigators expect to have 2,000 patients enrolled early this year, he said.
Price and colleagues plan to report 1-year survey results at the AAO meeting in New Orleans in November. – by Matt Hasson