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Prosthetic Soft Contact Lenses and You

The purpose of this article was to show how prosthetic soft contact lenses can be a valuable tool for treating various conditions that can affect a patient’s self-esteem and positively change his or her quality of life. Different indications, fitting characteristics, and color options are explored to give the practitioner basic knowledge and a simple, systematic approach to fitting soft prosthetic lenses. A young man, looking downward, introspective, and tilting his head to look through his good eye while keeping the disfigured eye away from sight, enters your office. He previously suffered severe eye trauma and had been through many failed surgeries, resulting in an opaque cornea. In addition, the curious stares, compassion, or disgust are almost more troubling than the appearance of his scarred eye. When patients with eye disorders (damage or disease) are treated, doctors will usually talk about the vision prognosis, surgery, treatment, and follow-up visits for the care of the damaged eye, but rarely about the cosmesis. Patients do not discuss cosmesis either because they believe that it is too expensive or there is nothing that can be done. At times for nonsighted eyes, the choice is removing the globe and replacing it with an artificial prosthesis or using a patch, neither of which is desirable. Patients who have disfigurements from trauma or disease, but have functional vision, are left with symptoms that can affect their lives. They are usually not aware of any treatment available to improve their appearance, vision, and lifestyle. Although improving a patient’s appearance after severe ocular trauma is not part of a routine daily visit, practitioners, contact lens fitters, and primary eye care providers should know how to treat patients with a damaged or diseased eye. We, as eye care professionals, could play an important role in helping the patient to improve his or her cosmetic appearance or functional requirement. Adding prosthetic lenses to the practice takes just a little effort to learn the latest technology available in prosthetic soft contact lenses, but doing so could help make a substantial improvement in the quality of life for your patients. Statistically, thousands of patients have disfigured eyes caused by trauma or congenital or inherited disorders. It has been reported that only a small percentage of these patients, between 5% and 10%, are being treated with prosthetic lenses. Unfortunately, patients usually had their trauma during their childhood and lived with it up to adulthood. These patients do not know that prosthetic lenses exist or that they may be candidates and go through life wearing dark glasses, their hair over one eye, or patches, or simply keeping the injured eye closed. The first step in helping these patients is understanding the conditions that may be suitable for prosthetic soft contact lenses, and second, following an easy fitting procedure is all that it takes to bring this specialty to your practice. A long list of conditions have been successfully treated with prosthetic soft contact lenses, providing great benefit to patients. Prosthetic lenses are important tools in treating several conditions of diseased or disfigured eyes. Practitioners should be familiar with these conditions. Treatable conditions involve functional and nonfunctional eyes. In cases in which the patient still has some visual function, the need for a prosthetic soft contact lens may exist only as a relief for a symptom that is associated with a corneaspecific condition (Table 1).