Contact Lenses

Soft Contact Lenses

Soft contact lenses are hydrophilic or "water loving". Their water content ranges from 38% to 75% for different applications. They provide increasing oxygen transmission but less durability as the water content raises.

Soft contact lenses offer the following advantages:

• comfortable
• quick adaptation to wearing
• flexible wearing times
• correction of most vision problems
• simple and easy care & hygiene
• ability to change or enhance eye colour.

Soft contact lenses are available as conventional lenses which usually last for 12 to 18 months using a care system which usually consists of separate solutions for cleaning, rinsing, disinfection & storage. They are now also available as disposable soft lenses, daily-disposable lenses and as tinted soft lenses.

Part or all of the cost of contact lenses is covered by your Health Fund if you have private health insurance.

Rigid Contact Lenses

Rigid, or hard, contact lenses are less comfortable initially but do offer specific advantages for some eye and vision problems:

• able to correct some problems which cannot be treated with soft lenses.
• more durable and longer life.
• able to correct some cases of astigmatism without requiring more expensive lens designs.

Your optometrist will advise you which contact lens type is most appropriate for you.

Wear and Care of your Rigid Contact Lenses

Disposable Contact Lenses

Disposable contact lenses are a sub-group within soft contact lenses. They provide improved eye health by the planned replacement of lenses before problems with lens aging and deposits can develop. These lenses have been made possible by improved methods of production which have lowered the cost to a point where disposability is affordable.

Different types of disposable contact lenses are replaced on a schedule of 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months.

Since the lenses do not have to last so long, the care and cleaning procedures are much simpler and are usually based upon a convenient 1-bottle system for cleaning, disinfection & storage.

They are now also available in tintedoptions and as a daily-disposable.

Daily Disposable Contact Lenses

Disposable contact lenses have now progressed to the ultimate in disposability: Daily-disposables. These are worn once and discarded. There are no solutions required since the lenses never need to be stored.

Daily disposable contact lenses are proving especially popular with people who want to wear them as an occasional option for social wear or sport.

Tinted & Coloured Contact Lenses

Soft contact lenses are also available in tints and colours. These fall in to 3 main categories:

VISIBILITY TINTS to make it easier to see and handle the contact lenses. These are usually a pale blue and included in the lenses at no extra charge

TRANSPARENT TINTS which are used to work with and enhance the patient’s own natural eye colour. For example: to make a hazel eye greener

COSMETIC TINTS which are used to cover and completely change the patients own eye colour. For example: to make brown eyes blue.