Review on Contact Lenses
Contact Lens as a Fashion Trend
First known in the early days to be a personal eye health thing for most people who use contact lens, it is now today’s new fashion trend and has fast become a cultural necessity to some showbiz people in some parts of the world. In the Philippines for example, in the showbiz industry, people have grown more fond of using contact lens as part of their everyday life in the movie industry. They wear contact lens just to add up to their beauty and prestige in the industry, hence, it has become a plus factor in some private people. It seem more of a fashion trend than a personal necessity because if you wear contact lenses with an Asian look and your eyes are colored in a different manner like gray or bluish, then it serves to distinguish you as one of those very trendy people in the elite backyard. You are being given a different treatment than the ordinary guys out there because you also look someone special if you wear a different color in your eyes using the contact lens.
3 Types of Contact Lenses
Commonly called as contacts, contact lenses are for treating eye defects or serve as the eye glasses that corrects problems of the eye. These contact lenses may either be a corrective lens type, cosmetic lens or therapeutic lens pertaining to their specific use for treating eye problems where it is originally intended for use thereof.
Corrective Lens - A corrective lens is usually used and worn in front 0f your eyes. By its name, the corrective lens is intended to cure common eye problems like myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism and the last but not the least, presbyopia. While the spectacles are worn with a specific distance from the front of the eye, contact lenses on the other hand are put directly in the surface of the eye. While the corrective contact lenses are for external use in the eye itself, there is also the intraocular lenses which are implanted inside the eye via surgery. corrective lenses have 2 types in its class.
- The first is the divergent lens - used for myopia patients or those that have problems with near sightedness.
- The second is the convergent lens - used for those who have problems being far sighted or the eye defect commonly called as hyperopia.
Cosmetic Lens - We understand that cosmetics are used to hide some of people’s defects or problems or sometimes to enhance beauty or trait in an artificial manner. Some common colloquial understanding on cosmetics would lead us to popular creams, makeup, perfume, hair sprays and this includes the contact lenses. These types of contact lenses are called as cosmetic lens. Usually colored, cosmetic contact lenses enhance the appearance and beauty of the eye and this has made them a popular additive to add up for beauty especially in the showbiz industry. This prompted so many celebrities to use and change their overall face factor because we all know that the first thing that we notice when we look at people is their eye. This made colored or cosmetic contact lenses popular with celebrities in the movie industry. This also prompted contact lenses to become more of a trend and a fashion than a cure to eye problems today. Mostly, cosmetic contact lenses give the effect of blurring of the vision because the color or design that they have affects the overall quality of sight. Another good example of cosmetic contact lenses are those that are used in theaters or movies.
- The theatrical contact lenses - used primarily in the entertainment and movie industry, the theatrical contact lens offer very good special effects mostly for horror movies of today. The effects that these theatrical contact lenses give may vary depending upon the need for the use. It may either be to make the eye appear pleasing, unusual or even the extreme unnatural which as i’ve said, used in horror movies.
- The scleral lenses - these types of contact lenses are used to cover that part of the eye which is white. Due to slight bigger size, it makes the scleral lens a little bit harder to insert in the eye and also makes them uneasy to use for theatrical purposes. This is it’s natural use because the large part of the eye is what it is used to cover (white part) which in turn equates for immobility. Having a smaller see-through passage for vision, this type of contact lens hinders a clear vision if the outside world of the eye and these special characteristics make them really hard to be worn for longer hours. Usually, a 3-hour wear would be uncomfortable and can cause disturbance in a person’s vision.
Therapeutic Lens - There are also non-refractive eye disorders and with this case, soft lenses are used in the treatment and this is also called as the therapeutic lens.
- Bandage contact lenses - bandage contact lenses are used to protect the eye with the diseased or injured cornea from getting touched by your eyelids when the blinking goes. As we all know, blinking is an unavoidable process that our eyes have to undergo for maybe a million times or more each day which in turn makes the cornea prone to damage. To prevent this from happening, optometrists usually prescribe the bandage contact lens. Such conditions that the bandage contact lens is used to cure are as follows:
- corneal ectasis
- bulous keratopathy
- keratitis
- erosion
- dry eyes
- edema
- corneal ulcers
- descemetocele
- anterior corneal dystrophy
- Mooren’s ulcer
- neurotrophic keratoconjunctivitis
Meanwhile, there are also newly developed contact lenses that are designed to deliver drugs to the eyes which is another milestone in the optics medicine industry. This gave way to the revolutionary development of the way that eyes are being treated today since it is also one of the most important part of the human body.
