As the name suggest, daily wearable contact lens are made to be removed and cleaned daily, while extended wear lenses can usually be worn continuously for up to 7 days straight (or more as CibaVision's Focus® Night & Day® contacts have been approved to be worn up to 30 days of continuous wear).
There are only a few large contact lens manufacturers worldwide at this time.
95% of all soft contact lenses prescribed by optometrists are produced by Ciba Vision,
Cooper Dream, Johnson and Johnson or Bausch and Lomb. And best of all, popular lenses
like Acuvue, Acuvue Advance and Acuvue 2 Colors, all Focus lenses, varieties
of SofLens, Freshlook Colorblends and other Freshlook color collections are
broadly available online.
Many contact lenses have undergone some serious modifactions during the past couple of
years and there are now numerous lenses on the market, like Ciba Night and Day plus
PureVision by Bausch and Lomb, which have gained many new patents because they allow
notably more oxygen to reach your eye. For this reason the FDA has
approved these lenses for extended wear usage.
The majority of people would profit from wearing silicone hydrogel lenses in comparison
to conventional soft lenses because of their health advantages. However, these
lenses are particularly useful in the following types of individuals: people with
a large amount of prescriptions; those whose eyes show signs that they have need of more
oxygen; users who experience end of day uncomfortabeness, redness or dryness
from their conventional soft lenses; individuals who wear their lenses for more
than 12 to 14 hours a day (including overnight wear); and kids and adolescents
who tend to normally wear their lenses for too long.
Additionally, because the Focus
Night & Day lenses and the PureVision lenses are allowed now for 30 days of
continuous usage, they can be considered as a useful alternative for persons
contemplating refractive surgery.
Silicone hydrogels perhaps is not the preferred lens for the majority of patients. These
lenses are by and large more expensive than non-silicone based lenses, hence a more price
concerned consumer probably won't prefer this alternative.
Also, in some users, the
silicone material tends to attract additional lipid deposits, which can cause
blurred vision and uncomfortableness. There are several cases where a patient is not
able to adjust well to the more rigid silicone material, which could result in
some minor defects to the corneal shape and design. These complications are very unusal
and generally the health advantages and increased comfort that most wearers
experience far outweigh the limited occurrances of adverse reactions in those who do
not adjust well to the silicone material.
However, not everybody will qualify for extended wear contacts because of the increased risk to eye health.
Persons with past eye health problems need to continue wearing other
lenses that are not extended wear types to ensure their eye health. If you're
interested in using extended wear contacts you should talk to your eye doctor
to help determine if you are a good nominee or not for them. If
not, your eye doctor can easily suggest other options.
If you've been prescribed for soft contact lens, most eye doctors lens of choice will start with CibaVision's
O2Optix™. This lens can be worn for up to one week extended wear or two
weeks daily wear. For patients who may not want to use a disposable lens,
your eye doctor will probably advise CibaVision's Cibasoft® Visitint® regularly daily
wear lenses.
The bad thing with extended wear contact lens is that when you be live or are employed in a
dusty or smoky environment, then tiny dust particles will get into your eyes, so the
lenses will no longer feel comfortable for numerous days in a row.
There are various daily disposable contact lenses availalbe today. 1 Day Acuvue by
Johnson and Johnson, Focus Dailies by Ciba Vision and Soflens One Day by
Bausch & Lomb are reasonably priced and healthy daily disposable contacts.