Visual performance of three disposable soft contact lenses

Abstract

The disposable soft contact lens has emerged as a significant modality in the contact lens world. Although its benefits and drawbacks are at times controversial, it has been shown to be an effective option for many contact lens wearers. One area that has been largely ignored by researchers is the visual aspect of the disposable lens. This study was designed to assess the visual performance of different disposable lenses to determine which provides the best vision. Five habitual soft contact lens wearers with less than 0.50 D refractive cylinder and 20 20 or better visual acuity when wearing soft contact lenses were used as subjects. Visual performance was assessed utilizing a repeated measures design developed in previous studies. The visual stimulus was a short duration (16 milliseconds) sine wave grating (10.5 cycles/degree) of varying contrast levels. For each subject, the contrast thresholds (50% correct level) at six distinct post-blink stimulus onset times were determined while wearing each of the three disposable lenses studied: Johnson & Johnson Acuvue, Ciba NewVues, and Bausch & Lomb SeeQuence. The effect of blink-induced lens movement on contrast sensitivity was thus examined. The optical quality of each lens was also assessed by using longer postblink stimulus onset times (>100 milliseconds). It was found that the Acuvue lens provided better overall vision than did the NewVues and SeeQuence lenses. This suggests that if the Acuvue lens provides an acceptable fit for a given patient, it may be the best first choice for a disposable contact lens.