3 Things a Contact Lens After Care & Follow up Exam Includes

Contact lens after care is not an eye examination. It may be a combination of the two. It is in fact a follow up eye examination, where ophthalmologists examine your eyes to see how contact lenses have affected your vision & eyes in general. Contact lens after care & follow ups are recommended once every year, unless you suffer from a typical vision disorder or are younger than 16 years of age.

What Happens in a Contact Lens Follow-up?

Contact lens follow ups help doctors analyze the general health of your eyes. From ruling out the possibility of any underlying infections that are as yet dormant to assessing the quality of tears are included in a doctor-patient contact lens follow up session.

Also Read: [ How Important are Contact Lens Followups?]

As a regular contact lens wearer, you are advised to allow enough time to let your contact lenses settle before you arrange an appointment with your doctor. Usually, after 3 hours of wearing contact lenses; your eyes show telltale signs of discomfort that only a doctor will be able to spot on. A contact lens follow up may include:

1. An eye test – To see if your prescription needs to be updated

2. Movement of Contact lenses on Cornea – To see how your eyes react against contact lenses. Contact lenses are meant to move on eyes, but not too much.

3. Quality of Tears – To see if your eyes are still producing enough quantity of tears to help lubricate your eyes. This test also helps sorting out the different modes of contact lens replacement. For instance; someone with dirty tear film needs daily disposable contact lenses.

Moreover, your eye doctor may ask you to remove your contact lenses. Doing so he will be able to analyze the performance of your eyes without contact lenses. Feel free to take along your contact lens solutions and lubricating drops if you have had suffered from red eyes, discomfort or eye sore. Depending on the health of your eyes and the ingredients mentioned on the product label; he will be able to find a link between infections and contact lenses (if any).

Also Read: [Converting Prescription of Glasses to Contact Lenses]

Please remember that prescription of your glasses is different than prescription of your contact lenses. This is why; get a fresh prescription from your eye doctor whenever you plan to make a switch between the two counter parts for vision correction. 

How to Easily Convert Prescription of Glasses to Contact Lenses

Prescription of glasses and contact lenses may have some correlation but they are quite different. Furthermore, prescriptions involve typical terms that are complex to decipher. It is almost impossible for a lay man to make an understanding out of the written prescriptions. Therefore, you are always advised to visit to your eye doctor whenever you are making adjustments in your life from glasses to circle contacts. Sometimes, however, you are too stuck in life to take time out to obtain contact lens prescription. Below, we will try to explain how to convert your glasses prescription to obtain circle contacts.

How different is the Prescription of Glasses from Contacts?

Prescription of glasses is measured in Diopters sphere; represented as “D”. Diopter Sphere indicates spherical correction only. “-“(minus) signs mean correction for nearsightedness whereas a “+” (plus) sign means correction for farsightedness (hyperopia). Please note Spherical Diopters prescription does not deal with correction of Astigmatism.

Glasses sit at the distance of 12mm whereas contact lenses directly float over the cornea. This means, it is needed to be adjusted for contact lenses. Technically speaking, the strength for contact lenses should be less than that of the glasses. Fortunately enough, if the absolute value (Ignoring + or -) is less than 4.00 Diopters; the change in the prescription from glasses to contact lenses is not significant in numbers. You would only need conversions if your prescription is greater than 4.00 diopters.

By using a Vertex Conversion Chart”; you can easily convert the values to derive your prescription of contact lenses from glasses'.

Let’s take an example

Below are the Sphere Values:

OD- Oculus Dexter (right eye): -5.00

OS- Oculus Sinister (left eye): -6.00

To convert the sphere values, we start with the right eye. In this case we have “-5.00” value which we will look up for, in the middle column. Since here we have a minus sign that means a correction for nearsightedness is required, we will refer to the values mentioned in the left column i.e. “-4.75”. For the left eye it would be “-5.62”. If we keep the values same, but need to make correction for the farsightedness then we will refer to the right column. Hence the values we get will be: “+5.25 & +6.50”.

Unfortunately, converting values from vertex chart only allows you to choose for an increment of every 0.25. (0.25, 0.75, 1.00, 1.25 etc). If your prescription ends with .12, .37, .62 you need to make a contemplated decision. Make a closest match either a value up, or down. In most cases either ways should work fine. This is how a simple prescription works.

Ont the other hand, “Cylinder number” in prescription of glasses indicates correction for “Astigmatism”. Regular soft contact lenses cannot correct astigmatism but “Toric contact lenses”. We recommend seeing your eye doctor in case of medical complications as he will be better able to check your eyes and recommend a brand as per your own individual requirements & health status.