What is probably the most common eye diagnosis of the patients in my practice? Astigmatism!
Astigmatism is a condition of the eye (not a disease), where the front of the eye has two distinctive curvatures. One curve corresponds to one glasses prescription, the other slightly different curve, corresponds to a slightly different glasses prescription.
That is why, with glasses or contact lens prescriptions if you see three numbers on the page, the middle one indicates the "astigmatism" value! Identifying this will help you see your best.
So what are the BEST contact lenses for astigmatism?
Soft Contact Lenses:
Soft contact lenses can be "commercially available", such as ones you can easily order by yourself online, or can be completely customized to the shape of your eye.
With commercially available lenses, every single brand of soft contact lens comes with its own shape, size, and material. To achieve the best fit, a very thorough eye and corneal examination, such as having scans at our office, can determine which of these lenses will fit you the best and provide the best vision and comfort.
It is also important to note that "one-size" does not fit all. Having a deep knowledge of the design characteristics of each contact lens is crucial to success with my patients.
Custom Soft Contact Lenses
This is one of my favorite contact lens choices for those with high astigmatism who have tried commercially available soft lenses but are frequently complaining of "rotating lenses", "unstable vision", "discomfort", or "having to touch the lens to get it to be in the right position". Does this sound like you? You would probably do very well with a custom soft contact lens.
Custom soft contact lenses can be made in virtually ANY prescription, ANY size, and are completely built off of custom measurements taken in our office. They can also do cool things such as incorporate prism.
Custom soft contact lenses tend to fit better and provide better vision to those with high astigmatism as well.
Rigid Gas Permeable Contact Lenses
Rigid gas permeable contact lenses are great for people with astigmatism who want to achieve extremely clear vision and feel that soft lenses are still "not sharp enough". With an RGP lens, the rigid material of the contact lens sits on a thin layer of your tears on top of the eye. This layer of tears can "fill in" any irregularities on the front surface to give you essentially a "new" more "spherical" corneal surface. This translates into sharper, crisper vision.
Hybrid Contact Lenses
Hybrid contact lenses are similar to RGP lenses but instead of floating around with each blink, they are more stabilized with a soft contact lens skirt surrounding the rigid portion of the lens. This provides extremely sharp vision and increased comfort.
Scleral Lenses
Scleral lenses are an amazing option for those with astigmatism and dry eye, high astigmatism, or irregular astigmatism which usually occurs in patients with conditions such as keratoconus, corneal transplants, radial keratotomy, and even severe dryness.
This lens is made of a rigid material that you fill with a sterile saline solution prior to inserting the lens on the eye. This saline stays on your eye all day. This "fills in" and "corrects" astigmatism, providing very sharp, stable, vision as well as the saline helping with dry eye.
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The easiest way to see if one of these is right for you is to schedule a consultation! Especially if you're someone who hasn't had a lot of success with contact lenses in the past, this is the right office for you!
To book an exam please give us a call at: 480-420-4243 or email; office@youreyesinfocus.com
