Even Discounted Contact Lens Need Cleaning - See Why

For such a delicate object so vital to our eye health, it's surprising what we actually do with them - even though they may be cheap thanks to all the discounted contact lens suppliers. We put them in our mouths to "clean" them, wear them for days on end, go swimming in them, rinse them in plain "bacteria infested" tap water, and even sleep in them.

Yet it's easy to understand how we can take them for granted - the soft contact lenses in particular are so comfortable it's easy to forget about them. But by not taking care of them - a quick dip in some contact lens cleaner is all that's needed - we leave ourselves open to some rather nasty eye infections which can quickly lead to serious medical complications.

Bacterial infections can cause painful inflammations in the cornea. Organisms living in tap water can colonize the eye and resist most drugs intending to kill them off. In severe cases, patients can go blind or require cornea transplants. In our area, the past 18 months has seen higher numbers of patients infected with a particularly nasty protozoan called Acanthamoeba.

Rocco, 20, (of Algonquin) only wore his contacts a few months before he began waking up to throbbing pain in his left eye, which had turned red. Rocco, who had just returned home from his freshman year at Eastern Illinois University, went to a family doctor expecting a diagnosis of pink eye. It was Acanthamoeba.

Six months and three doctors later, Rocco underwent a cornea transplant. It was the only way doctors could save his vision after medications failed to kill the amoebas colonizing his left eye, causing scar tissue to blur his eyesight.

Unfortunately this young man is now facing another cornea transplant in is other eye - so it's imperative to keep your lenses clean all the time, and take great care of them.

Having said all that, outbreaks of Acanthamoeba are still relatively rare. Statistics show that there are only about one or two reported cases of it in every one million contact lens wearers. The more common problem is bacterial infections, which affect approximately 1 in every 2500 wearers each year.

The problem is that contact lenses counteract the eyes natural defense mechanisms. When you blink your eyes, your eyelid spreads tears from your tear ducts all over the epithelium (medical term for the top layer of your eye). This washes away any bacteria and foreign objects and keeps your eyes clean and healthy. When you introduce a contact lens into your eye, the natural defense process no longer works as the eyelid is no longer in direct contact with your eye. So your contact lenses have to be perfectly clean to ensure healthy eyes.