Alternative contact lens options may help dropouts get refit
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Key takeaways:
- At 1 month, 93.2% of participants reported being satisfied with overall contact lens comfort with new lenses.
- At 6 months, 80.7% reported they were very likely or likely to continue wearing the lenses.
ATLANTA — Offering an alternative contact lens option may help patients who had discontinued lens wear be comfortably refit, according to research published in Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics.
“We found that overall the patients were satisfied with their vision in the [new] contact lenses over the past week,” Andrew D. Pucker, OD, PhD, FAAO, study author and senior director of clinical and medical sciences at Lexitas Pharma Services, told Healio in an interview at SECO. “Ninety percent or more were satisfied with their vision. Over 80% were satisfied with comfort, and 98% would recommend them to a friend at 1 month. At 6 months it was slightly less, but 93% of the people would still recommend the contact lenses.”
In a 6-month study conducted at Southern College of Optometry in Tennessee, Pucker and colleagues recruited 60 adults with a mean age of 24 years (71.7% women) who had discontinued use of contact lenses due to discomfort or dryness.
Participants were fitted in Dailies Total1 lenses (delefilcon A, Alcon). They completed Standard Patient Evaluation of Eye Dryness (SPEED) questionnaires and a comfort visual analogue scale (VAS) at 1 month, as well as a Likert questionnaire at 1 and 6 months.
All participants were still in the lenses at 1 month, and only one dropped out by 6 months. The median VAS score at 1 month was 44 units, with all participants reporting a positive or comfortable score. At baseline, the median SPEED score was 2, which improved to scores of 0 and 1 at 1 week and 1 month, respectively.
Further, 98.3% of participants reported at 1 month they were very satisfied or satisfied with their vision, 86.5% reported they were very satisfied or satisfied with their end-of-day contact lens comfort, and 93.2% reported they were very satisfied or satisfied with their overall contact lens comfort. Similar results were reported at 6 months, with 93.2%, 78% and 91.5%, respectively, responding as very satisfied or satisfied.
Results also showed 89.6% of participants reported they were very likely or likely to continue wearing the lenses at 1 month, which dropped only slightly to 80.7% at 6 months. At 1 month, 98.3% would recommend the lenses to a friend, and 93.2% would at 6 months.
Pucker told Healio that offering just one alternative lens option to patients who had completely discontinued use could help them resume wearing contact lenses.
“This is important because roughly 20% of contact lens wearers drop out each year,” he said. “There’s minimal growth. The population in the U.S. is increasing so there’s more sales, but the overall percentage of people who wear contact lenses is stagnant. Maybe if we give people some options, we can move the dial a little bit.”
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