Back to School Contact Lens Care

Contact Lens 101: A Back-to-School Must for Teens

Did you know that 25% of children and adolescent emergency room visits related to medical devices are for contact lens problems? Many of our children and teenagers start wearing contact lenses as they enter junior high or high school. Safe and enjoyable contact lens wear does require good hygiene and care in order to prevent a risk of infection. Young people are notoriously poor at caring for their contact lenses, creating a potential gateway for serious eye infections that can cause impaired vision or even blindness. Research has shown that poor contact lens care practices by teens and young people raise their risk of eye conditions such as infectious keratitis and corneal ulcers. In the most severe cases, they may require corneal transplants to restore sight. Fortunately, contact lens eye infections can be prevented by following simple contact lens care guidelines. Here are some practical safety tips that teens with contact lenses should follow to avoid eye infections.

New Quarter, New Case! Replacing your contact lens case every three months will help keep germs at bay. To make it easy to remember, swap out your case at the beginning of each quarter. Waiting to replace contact lens cases after 6 months increases the risk of eye infection by nearly 5.5 times!

Just Say NO to H₂0. You may be captain of the swim team, but you shouldn’t swim, shower or go in a hot tub wearing lenses. Water from the tap might be clean enough to drink or bathe in, but it’s still home to the parasite Acanthamoeba, which can cause severe eye infections resulting in vision loss. For the same reasons, NEVER use water to rinse or soak contact lenses or cases.

You Snooze, You Lose. Never sleep in your contact lenses. Even occasionally sleeping in contact lenses increases the risk of moderate to severe eye infection by 6.5 times. Unfortunately, a poll of nearly 100,000 people by BuzzFeed found that about 70 percent of respondents occasionally or regularly sleep in their contact lenses.

It’s Too Late If You Wait. Symptoms of eye infections include redness, pain and light sensitivity and requiring examination and evaluation immediately. Waiting to get examined or treated could lead to vision loss.

If you or someone you know would like to learn more or has questions about contact lens hygiene and safety, please schedule an appointment at Northwest Indiana Eye & Laser Center at 219-464-8223, or visit Northwest Indiana Eye & Laser Center, Google or facebook.com/nwindianaeyeandlaser. 

Northwest Indiana Eye & Laser Center offices are located at 502 Marquette Street, Valparaiso, Indiana 46383 and 1001 South Edgewood Drive, Knox, Indiana 46354.