Abstract
Purpose: To investigate the efficacy and complications of continuous wear of etafilcon A for therapeutic use. Materials and Methods: The subjects were 228 eyes of 219 outpatients prescribed contact lens (CL) for one week of continuous therapeutic wear during 10 years. The reason for prescription of CLs, the primary disease, the duration of CL wear and the complications were assessed retrospectively. Results: The predominant reason for prescription of CLs was relief of pain or a foreign-body sensation (62.3%) and protection of the corneal epithelium (20.6%). The primary disease was post-penetrating keratoplasty (36.8%), followed by corneal epithelial erosion (14.5%), post-lamellar keratoplasty (14.0%) and bullous keratopathy (12.2%). The average duration of wearing single lens was 6.5 ± 3.2 days. The average duration of wearing CLs in total was 9.2 ± 10.7 months. The most frequent problem associated with continuous wear of CLs was their dropping out of CLs (12.3%). The complications associated with CLs included conjunctivitis with papillary hyperplasia, corneal erosion and superficial punctate keratitis, but corneal ulcer and corneal infiltrates were not found. Conclusion: Serious complications were not shown changing the lenses every week to keep to the prescribed time limit for continuous therapeutic wear, even if corneal epithelial barrier function is impaired.
Highlights
Contact Lenses (CLs) are originally developed for the correction of refractive errors
We investigated the efficacy and complications of continuously wearing therapeutic Soft Contact Lenses (SCLs) in patients treated at our hospital over a period of 10 years
Acuvue® is a disposable SCL for continuous wear until 1 week, therapeutic use is not permitted by FDA
Summary
Contact Lenses (CLs) are originally developed for the correction of refractive errors. Soft Contact Lenses (SCLs) are occasionally used for treating corneal and conjunctival diseases, being used to prevent the exfoliation of corneal epithelial cells and to protect from mechanical damage and to hold wettability of the ocular surface preventing evaporation of the tear fluid [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. In most patients who are prescribed SCLs for therapeutic use, corneal epithelial damage is present and barrier function may be impaired. Corneal infection usually does not occur in healthy eyes. This may be because of effective corneal epithelial barrier function and protective substances in the tear film. It is possible that there may be a high
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