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Fresh Look	Air Optix
Acuvue Contact Lenses	Focus

 

History of Contact Lenses

Leonardo da Vinci is frequently credited with introducing the idea of contact lenses in his 1508 Codex of the eye, Manual D, where he described a method of directly altering corneal power by submerging the eye in a bowl of water. Leonardo, however, did not suggest his idea be used for correcting vision—he was more interested in learning about the mechanisms of accommodation of the eye.

Leonardo da Vinci is frequently credited with introducing the idea of contact lenses in his 1508 Codex of the eye, Manual D, where he described a method of directly altering corneal power by submerging the eye in a bowl of water. Leonardo, however, did not suggest his idea be used for correcting vision—he was more interested in learning about the mechanisms of accommodation of the eye.

René Descartes proposed another idea in 1636, in which a glass tube filled with liquid is placed in direct contact with the cornea. The protruding end was to be composed of clear glass, shaped to correct vision; however the idea was impracticable, since it would make blinking impossible.

In 1801, while conducting experiments concerning the mechanisms of accommodation, scientist Thomas Young constructed a liquid-filled "eye cup" which could be considered a predecessor to the contact lens. On the eye cup's base, Young fitted a microscope eyepiece. However, like Leonardo's, Young's device was not intended to correct refraction errors.

Sir John Herschel, in a footnote of the 1845 edition of the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, posed two ideas for the visual correction: the first "a spherical capsule of glass filled with some sort of transparent medium". Though Herschel reportedly never tested these ideas, they were both later advanced by several independent inventors such as Hungarian Dr. Dallos (1929), who perfected a method of making molds from living eyes. This enabled the manufacture of lenses that, for the first time, conformed to the actual shape of the eye.

It was not until 1887 that a German glassblower, F.E. Muller, produced the first eye covering to be seen through and tolerated. In 1888, the German physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick constructed and fitted the first successful contact lens. While working in Zuricht he described fabricating a focal contact shells, which rested on the less sensitive rim of tissue around the cornea, and experimentally fitting them: initially on rabbits, then on himself, and lastly on a small group of volunteers. These lenses were made from heavy blown glass and were 18–21mm in diameter. Fick filled the empty space between cornea/callosity and glass with a dextrose solution. He published his work, "contact-brille", in the Scientific journal in March 1888.

Fick's lens was large, unwieldy, and could only be worn for a few hours at a time. Kiel, Germany, corrected his own severe myopia with a more convenient glass-blown scleral contact lens of his own manufacture in 1888.

Also in 1887, Louis J. Girard invented a similar scleral form of contact lens. Glass-blown scleral lenses remained the only form of contact lens until the 1930s when polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA or Polymethyl methacrylate was developed, allowing plastic scleral lenses to be manufactured for the first time. In 1936, optometrist William Feinbloom introduced plastic lenses, making them lighter and more convenient. These lenses were a combination of glass and plastic.

In 1949, the first "corneal" lenses were developed. These were much smaller than the original scleral lenses, as they sat only on the cornea rather than across all of the visible ocular surface, and could be worn up to sixteen hours per day. PMMA corneal lenses became the first contact lenses to have mass appeal through the 1960s, as lens designs became more sophisticated with improving manufacturing (lathe) technology.

Early corneal lenses in the 1950s and 1960s were relatively expensive and fragile, resulting in the development of a market for contact lens insurance. Replacement Lens Insurance, Inc. (now known as RLI Corp. phased out its original flagship product in 1994 after contacts became more affordable and easier to replace.

One important disadvantage of PMMA lenses is that no oxygen is transmitted through the lens to the conjunctiva and cornea, which can cause a number of adverse clinical effects. By the end of the 1970s, and through the 1980s and 1990s, a range of oxygen-permeable but rigid materials were developed to overcome this problem. Collectively, these polymers are referred to as "rigid gas permeable" or "RGP" materials or lenses.

Although all the above lens types—sclerals, PMMA lenses and RGPs—could be correctly referred to as being "hard" or "rigid", the term hard is now used to refer to the original PMMA lenses which are still occasionally fitted and worn, whereas rigid is a generic term which can be used for all these lens types.

That is, hard lenses (PMMA lenses) are a sub-set of rigid lenses. Occasionally, the term "gas permeable" is used to describe RGP lenses, but this is potentially misleading, as soft lenses are also gas permeable in that they allow oxygen to move through the lens to the ocular surface.

The principal breakthrough in soft lenses was made by the Czech chemists Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lim who published their work "Hydrophilic gels for biological use" in the journal Nature in 1959.

This led to the launch of the first soft (hydrogel) lenses in some countries in the 1960s and the first approval of the "Soflens" material by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1971.

These lenses were soon prescribed more often than rigid lenses, mainly due to the immediate comfort of soft lenses; by comparison, rigid lenses require a period of adaptation before full comfort is achieved.

The polymers from which soft lenses are manufactured improved over the next 25 years, primarily in terms of increasing the oxygen permeability by varying the ingredients making up the polymers.

In 1999, an important development was the launch of the first silicone hydrogels onto the market. These new materials encapsulated the benefits of silicone—which has extremely high oxygen permeability—with the comfort and clinical performance of the conventional hydrogels which had been used for the previous 30 years. These lenses were initially advocated primarily for extended (overnight) wear although more recently, daily (no overnight) wear silicone hydrogels have been launched.

In a slightly modified molecule, a polar group is added without changing the structure of the silicone hydrogel. This is referred to as the Tanaka monomer because it was invented and patented by Kyoichi Tanaka of Menicon Co. of Japan in 1979. Second-generation silicone hydrogels, such as galyfilcon A (Acuvue Advance, Vistakon) and senofilcon A (Acuvue Oasys, Vistakon), use the Tanaka monomer. Vistakon improved the Tanaka monomer even further and added other molecules, which serves as an internal wetting agent.

Comfilcon A (Biofinity, CooperVision) was the first third-generation polymer. The patent claims that the material uses two siloxy macromers of different sizes that, when used in combination, produce very high oxygen permeability (for a given water content). Enfilcon A (Avaira, CooperVision) is another third-generation material that's naturally wettable. The enfilcon A material is 46% water.

 

How do Contact Lenses Work?

Function

Corrective Contact Lenses

Contact lens (also known simply as a contact) is a corrective, or therapeutic lens usually placed on the cornea of the eye. Modern soft contact lenses were invented by the Czech chemist Otto Wichterle and his assistant Drahoslav Lím, who also invented the first gel used for their production.

Contact lenses usually serve the same corrective purpose as glasses, but are lightweight and virtually invisible—many commercial lenses are tinted a faint blue to make them more visible when immersed in cleaning and storage solutions. Some cosmetic lenses are deliberately colored to alter the appearance of the eye. Some lenses now have a thin surface treatment which is a UV coating; this helps to reduce UV damage to the eye's natural lens. This claim needs more investigation

It has been estimated that 125 million people use contact lenses worldwide (2%), including 28 to 38 million in the United States and 13 million in Japan. The types of lenses used and prescribed vary markedly between countries, with rigid lenses accounting for over 20% of currently-prescribed lenses in the Netherlands but less than 5% in Scandinavia.

People choose to wear contact lenses for many reasons, often due to their appearance and practicality. When compared with spectacles, contact lenses are less affected by wet weather, do not steam up, and provide a wider field of vision. They are more suitable for a number of sporting activities. Additionally, conditions such as keratoconus and aniseikonia may not be accurately corrected with glasses.

Cosmetic Contact Lenses

A cosmetic contact lens is designed to change the appearance of the eye. These lenses may also correct the vision, but some blurring or obstruction of vision may occur as a result of the color or design.

In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration frequently calls non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses decorative contact lenses. These types of lenses tend to cause mild irritation on insertion, but after the eyes become accustomed, tend to cause no long term damage.

Though it is advised that these lenses not be worn too much, research has shown them to have no direct link to any forms of eye degradation.

Theatrical contact lenses are a type of cosmetic contact lens that are used primarily in the entertainment industry to make the eye appear confusing and arousing in appearance, most often in Horror film and movies, where lenses can make one's eyes appear demonic, cloudy and lifeless, or even to make the pupils of the wearer appear dilated to simulate the natural appearance of the pupils under the influence of various illicit drugs.

Scleral lenses cover the white part of the eye and are used in many theatrical lenses. Due to their size, these lenses are difficult to insert and do not move very well within the eye. They may also hamper the vision as the lens has a small area for the user to see through. As a result they generally cannot be worn for more than 3 hours as they can cause temporary vision disturbances.

Similar lenses have more direct medical applications. For example, some lenses can give the iris an enlarged appearance, or mask defects such as absence of or damage to the iris.

A new trend in Japan and South Korea is the Circle Contact Lens. Circle lenses appear to be bigger because they are not only tinted in areas that cover the iris of the eye, but tinted prominently in the extra-wide outer ring of the lens. The result is the appearance of a bigger, wider iris.

Although many brands of contact lenses are lightly tinted to make them easier to handle, cosmetic lenses worn to change the color of the eye are far less common, accounting for only 3% of contact lens fits in 2004.

Contact lenses, other than the cosmetic variety, become almost invisible once inserted in the eye

Therapeutic Contact Lenses

Soft lenses are often used in the treatment and management of non-refractive disorders of the eye. A bandage contact lens protects an injured or diseased cornea from the constant rubbing of blinking eyelids thereby allowing it to heal.

They are used in the treatment of conditions including bullous keratopathy, dry eyes, corneal ulcers and keratitis, corneal edema, corneal ectasis, Mooren's ulcer, anterior corneal dystrophy, and neurotrophic keratoconjunctivitis.

Contact lenses that deliver drugs to the eye have also been developed.