This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Demographic factors influence ocular comfort variations during soft lens wear
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Patient demographics such as age, gender, lens wear experience, ethnicity and refractive status can influence the rating of ocular comfort in clinical studies, according to researchers in Optometry and Vision Science.
The retrospective analysis of ocular comfort ratings with soft contact lens wear included 44 nonrandomized clinical trials conducted at the Brien Holden Vision Institute in Sydney, Australia. A total of 986 participants were included with an 84% completion rate; mean participant age at baseline was 29 years.
Subjects wore one of seven silicone hydrogels on a daily wear schedule in both eyes. Patients used one of nine lens care products, one of which was a hydrogen peroxide-based solution, with the rest multipurpose lens care products, according to the study.
The sample also included six daily disposable lenses: one was a conventional hydrogel and the remaining five were silicone hydrogel.
A questionnaire was administered to all participants to grade their ocular comfort on insertion, during the day and end of day with contact lenses using a 1-10 numerical point scale, where 10 was “excellent.”
Comfort on insertion was rated lower by neophytes than experienced wearers by 0.8 units and higher by participants older than 45 years than those younger than 25 years by 0.9 units and those between 25 and 25 years old by 0.6 units, according to researchers.
Overall comfort on insertion improved over 3 months.
Overall during-the-day comfort was 8.2. Age, ethnicity, magnitude of refractive error and lens wear experience all influenced comfort, in addition to lens-solution combinations.
Participants of Asian ethnicity rated their comfort during the day significantly lower than Caucasians.
The middle age group showed a steeper increase across all follow-up visits compared to other age groups.
Also, participants with higher refractive error reported higher comfort, according to the study. – by Abigail Sutton
Disclosure: The researchers reported no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts