A WIDE SELECTION OF CONTACT LENSES

Dr. Schrock: a good age to start is age 12 or 13, but we certainly do fit younger children. I preface that with saying I go largely with the parent’s recommendation. Whey the parent feels that their child is ready and mature enough for contact lenses, we are absolutely willing and ready to give it a try. Every now and then I will successfully fit a 9 or 10 year old for contacts.

Dr. Schrock: I usually don’t push it on seniors, unless they ask me. The vast majority of contact lens fits are between the ages of 12 and 50 years old. I have fit a few older than 50 years old, but not many. This is the presbyopic age.

I will certainly fit you with contacts if that is what you would like. In my opinion, at age 55 most people will get overall better vision with eye glasses rather than contact lenses.

I used to wear contacts myself until my 40’s and then I started using the bifocal contacts. I could see OK, but it’s not the same clear sharp vision as when I wear my progressive eyeglass lenses. I get excellent binocularity and crispness.

I fit people all the time for bifocal contacts, and we’ve been very successful, but it’s not for everybody. The patient needs to be really motivated and want it, and understand that it won’t be as crisp and clear as glasses because of the simultaneous vision you will get with an aspheric or aspheric type of bifocal contact lens.

Dr. Schrock: Definitely far-sighted people, hyperopes, are good candidates for bifocal contacts and are very happy with them. People who have a +1 +2, or +3 seem to do better with the contacts. For anyone with a small amount of nearsightedness, we won’t push contact lenses. If someone is a -1 myope, we might give them a contact for one eye, but typically their near vision and intermediate vision is very good. They will get quite a bit of pushback if you try to put them into a bifocal contact lens.

Dr. Schrock: I don’t recommend contacts for people with drier eyes or those who have a lot of irritation.

Dr. Schrock: Astigmatism is not a huge hurdle. If it’s too much, we might need to go to a rigid or bitoric lens, but most of the time we fit our astigmatic patients into a toric lens very successfully. It gets a bit more trickier once they get presbyopic simply because I am not real thrilled about the astigmatism lenses that are coupled with bifocal type lenses. They are available, but we’ve tried them and haven’t been so successful with those.

Dr. Schrock: Sure. Contacts are a great option for people who play sports and or have an active lifestyle. I recommend soft or soft toric lenses over the rigid lenses for people who play sports since the hard lenses (rigid lenses) are more likely to pop out during sports.

Dr. Schrock: Contact lens technology has certainly improved and we’ve seen some better stability with the toric lenses than in the past. When I started 25 years ago and we fit people in toric lenses, especially the smaller prescriptions, we weren’t very successful. Now we are much more successful with the smaller prescriptions, which is encouraging. We also have the silicon hydrogel contacts which increases the oxygen permeability. We are also slowly using more and more daily disposables for better eye hygiene.

Dr. Schrock: If it has been more than six months then we will need to do another full eye exam. If it has only been six months or less, we probably won’t require a full eye exam, but we will need to check the refraction at least. I won’t need to dilate you, but we need to make sure we are starting with a reliable refraction before we put you in contact lenses.