Can you recommend contacts for astigmatism?

November 7, 2004 7:09 PM

My gf has an eye exam in a few days and is looking for extended wear contacts for a slight astigmatism. Does anyone have any reccomendations?
posted by ttrendel to health & fitness (7 comments total)

I am near-sighted and have a very strong astigmatism. I've worn hard contacts for decades to get crisp vision. I finally switched over to soft lenses in September. I'm currently wearing Vertex Toric lenses.

My doctor gave me six different samples to use before deciding on Vertex. Frankly, my vision is not nearly as good as it was with hard lenses. The trade off is the comfort. I wore my hard lenses for one day a few weeks back and I found them to be very uncomfortable.

If your gf's astigmatism is not severe, she'll probably love soft contacts. She should ask her doctor to give her a few samples before she makes a final choice.
posted by Juicylicious at 7:17 PM on November 7, 2004

I wear BioMedics Toric lenses (frequent replacement), which I love, I get good vision correction and they don't dry out my eyes too much.. I strongly agree with Juicylicious that she should try different ones, the first trial pair of toric lenses I had (a few years ago), were awful, they glued themselves to my eyes and I could barely see, and it took me fifteen minutes each to get them out after about six hours of wear. As an aside, I have now had two different eye doctors tell me that "extended wear" contacts aren't really safe, so I don't wear them.
posted by biscotti at 7:53 PM on November 7, 2004

Ditto what has been said above. All the brands out there seem to fit slightly differently, so sometimes you need to try a few kinds to get it right. If she's new to contact lenses, unfortunately, she might not know what to expect, so she might want to make a follow up appointment after a month or so just to check on things.

I have slight astigmatism in both eyes and wear Bausch & Lomb 66 Toric SofLenses, and they are just perfect. My vision with them is actually slightly better than with my glasses of identical prescription.
posted by psmealey at 8:02 PM on November 7, 2004

I'm extremely picky about having perfect corrected vision, so I continue to use gas-permeable hard lenses for my astigmatism & near-sightedness, rather than soft torics. I've always used the Boston products and been happy with their comfort and longevity.

One interesting note: an eye doctor once switched me to a different brand, and they stung my eyes constantly. Even after several days of acclimation time, I couldn't stand them. I switched back to Boston and it was all soothing cool comfort. Apparently people can be very sensitive to one or more components of the various plastics used in lenses. If one brand is irritating, try another.
posted by Tubes at 10:50 PM on November 7, 2004

Like Tubes, I had the hard lenses but I switched back to soft lenses for the comfort. I also have a setup called "monovision", with a closeup lens in the right and distance in the left. I started with two different brands but the left irritated the hell out of my eye. I now have the same brand in both eyes.

Just so you know, the anti-astigmatism feature for soft lenses is accomplished by having a little weight molded into the lens (visible when you look at the lens) that causes the lens to rotate to the "weight down" position. You really need to keep them clean and moist for this to work correctly. I'd go for daily wear because of this, but that's me. I don't mind taking mine out every evening.
posted by tommasz at 10:02 AM on November 8, 2004

Recommendation? Find a *good* optometrist - someone who actually has a two-way conversation with you.

I use Coopervision Frequency 55's. Acuvue Torics are more comfortable, but my vision's not as good with them and their base curve doesn't really fit my eye.

I wear my lenses daily and change them after about 20 days of wear. I find that I can't get the full month out of them - they get 'crispy'.

I also find that rinsing the 'all-in-one' lens cleaning fluid off with preservative-free saline before insertion approximately doubles the amount of time I can comfortably wear the lens, even though the label suggests that you can put the all-in-one fluid directly into your eye.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:30 AM on November 8, 2004

i can see about 6-8 inches clearly with no contacts in - i get to 20/10 vision with the softlens toric 66. can wear them about a month (using the no-rub cleaners) before they start to bug me, then i toss 'em. i do remove them daily though, and would recommend doing the same - even most of the "extended wear" lenses say to remove them every day.

for some reason the last box i used the lenses seemed to get dry fairly easily, although the first year i wore them this didn't happen. YMMV...

(i've had contacts for about 20 years and this is the first time i've had lenses that got dry and sort of foggy while i was wearing them. might have been the solution i was using, we switched brands on the saline and it seems to have stopped doing that.)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:30 PM on November 8, 2004