Contact Lenses Treatment

Self-Care at Home

• If you experience irritation, pain, blurred vision, redness, or light sensitivity, immediately remove your contact lenses and then re-evaluate your symptoms.
  • Because you should not wear your contact lenses when experiencing these problems, you should have an up-to-date pair of glasses for these times. With well-fitting contact lenses, your glasses would only be used in the case of an emergency, thereby enabling you to drive or to function at work.
  • You should examine your contact lenses for any defects. In the case of a torn soft lens or a cracked gas permeable lens, your eye should feel immediately relieved once you remove it.
• If soap or cleaning solution gets in your contact lens case and, in turn, on your lenses, irrigate your eyes with your rinsing solution or tap water. Then, either discard the lenses or rinse them off multiple times in the storage solution to rid the lenses of the soap.
• When the irritation is from something blowing into the eye, remove the lens and look for a foreign body. The foreign body may be removed with a cotton-tipped applicator or a rolled up piece of facial tissue. Once removed, your eye should feel immediately relieved of the discomfort.
• If eyedrops are prescribed for an infection, you should use these eyedrops with the contacts out of your eyes. You should not wear contacts when your eyes are red or irritated.
  • To instill eyedrops , hold your head back and squeeze 1 drop out of the bottle. Close your eye for about 30 seconds after instilling the eyedrop, and do not rub your eye.

Medical Treatment

Treatment ranges from not wearing your contact lenses for a short time to intensive antibiotic treatment of infections. You may have to wear your glasses for a variable period of time.

If only 1 eye is affected, you still should not wear a contact lens in the other eye, as some infections can spread into the uninvolved eye.

• If the lens is worn out or torn, it must be replaced. With frequent replacement lens wear, you usually have extra lenses at home and can easily replace the lens yourself.
• If a solution incompatibility is suspected, solutions and the care regimen are changed.
• If the lens is not fitting well, wear of that lens is discontinued. It may be necessary to refit you with new lenses, which may be better tolerated or may provide better vision.
• With infections, antibiotic eyedrops are used. Pills are rarely used because eyedrops are much more effective.
  • Your eye doctor chooses an eyedrop that is most effective for the particular infection. Eyedrops may need to be used every hour. You might have to be seen every day with more serious infections.
  • With corneal infections, a culture of the infection may be taken to help determine the best antibiotic eyedrop.
  • On rare occasions, surgical management of the infection may be necessary. Ultimately, if more conservative treatment is not successful, antibiotic injections into the eye or even a corneal transplant may be necessary.