Observations users who sleep with contact lenses

Study shows patients experiencing inflammatory events tend to sleep in lenses

DENVER – Research presented here at the American Academy of Optometry meeting identified specific behaviors that were risk factors for inflammatory events in contact lens wearers.

Luigina Sorbara, OD, MSc, FAAO, FBCLA,Dip, reported that she and her colleagues sought to test the ability of the Contact Lens Assessment in Youth(CLAY) Contact Lens Risk Survey (CLRS) to determine factors associated with inflammatory events vs. non-inflammatory events and matched controls.

The CLRS was administered to soft contact lens wearers who presented with complaints of a red eye at 11 clinical sites, and the clinicians classified the diagnosis as inflammatory or noninflammatory. Ninety-eight cases were classified as inflammatory, 73 were classified as noninflammatory, and 207 served as nonclinical controls.

Using the survey responses, it was found that 18% of subjects experiencing inflammatory events reported that they always or fairly often slept in their contact lenses vs. 8% with noninflammatory events and 10% of controls, according to the study abstract. They were also more likely to purchase their contacts on the Internet: 23% vs. 11% vs. 12%, respectively. While 29% of subjects experiencing noninflammatory events said they replaced their lenses on a daily basis, only 13% of those with inflammatory events said they did. Subjects with inflammatory events were also more likely to share a bathroom and more likely to replace their lenses only if there was a problem, survey results indicated.

“This work adds new information regarding risk factors for inflammatory events and adds new information about environmental factors that may also drive inflammatory events,” the authors concluded.

Disclosure: Sorbara is involved in research at the Centre for Contact Lens research and is part of the Contact Lens Assessment in Youth Group team.