With so much talk at the moment about plastic pollution, here’s one small way in which the vision impaired community can help. We can stop flushing our used contact lenses down the loo!
In a BBC article this week, Environment Correspondent, Matt McGrath, explains how discarded disposable contact lenses can end up as plastic waste in the ocean. So the next time you remove your lenses, please put them in the bin.
Read the full BBC article here.
Picture: GETTY IMAGES
A pilot randomised study, led by Maria Theodorou FRCOphth, PhD at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, funded by the Nystagmus Network/Fight for Sight, Moorfields Eye Hospital Special Trustees and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), has shown that wearing soft contact lenses may help people with CIN see a little better.
The purpose of the study was to see whether soft contact lenses could improve vision more than glasses and whether soft lenses were as effective as rigid ones.
38 adult volunteers with CIN wore soft contact lenses (randomly with and without corrective prescription) for 2 weeks. Observations were made around the ease and safety of wear as well as any effect on visual acuity and nystagmus waveform.
27 people successfully completed the trial, a small number having found soft contact lenses difficult to get in and out of the eye or uncomfortable to wear. On the whole, the lenses were tolerated well and a trend was identified towards an improvement in visual function after the 2 weeks.
