Want to start wearing contact lenses - will this impact on my dry eye?

[dryeyepete]

I have recently wanted to try out contact lenses for the first time, I find wearing glasses a hassle since I play sports and they are prone to falling off. However, I have heard some people with dry eye find wearing contacts painful. Is it worth trying out contact lenses, although I dont want them to make my dry eye worse, I would only wear them 5 days a week for about 5 to 10 hours a day. What do you guys think? Should I try them out or do you recommend against contacts for dry eye sufferers?

[ringo]

Hi,

I have tried wearing contact lenses when I initially developed dry eye. It was not even half as bad as it is now, but still the lenses really hurt my eyes, and scratched the surface (cornea) causing the so-called corneal defects which if not taken care of progress to erosions.

These scratches increase the pain, especially with blinking or waking up. Besides, they contribute to the development of stringy mucous sticking to the eye surface, which in turn aggravates the condition immensely.

On top of all that, dry eye involves a compromised eye surface barrier, meaning that the eye is more susceptible to being infected than that of a healthy person. That means that if you do manage to survive the pain of contact lenses, you will have to be extra meticulous about their hygiene, and that requires lots of efforts added to the rest of the care that dry eyes require.

Personally, I would never try wearing them again. There are much more risks than benefits involved.

[Rebecca Petris]

I have recently wanted to try out contact lenses for the first time, I find wearing glasses a hassle since I play sports and they are prone to falling off. However, I have heard some people with dry eye find wearing contacts painful. Is it worth trying out contact lenses, although I dont want them to make my dry eye worse, I would only wear them 5 days a week for about 5 to 10 hours a day. What do you guys think? Should I try them out or do you recommend against contacts for dry eye sufferers?

Dry eye sufferers are not all equal so hard to say. But broadly speaking, a dry eye is gonna get drier and more uncomfortable with a lens in it, and people with severe dry eye usually can't wear contacts. But who knows, for a special need like sports and limited wear time maybe it is worth pursuing. There are some 'dry eye friendly' contact lenses. I'd make sure to have a good optician who knows what they're doing and maybe even get more than one doctor's opinion about whether it's going to be OK for you.

[painless]

I think it's worth trying. For about a year or two, my eyes actually felt better with contacts in. Eventually, my dry eye got much worse and now contacts usually are unbearably uncomfortable for me. Sometimes they are ok for a short time (a couple of hours), but that's rare.

Contacts have never seemed to affect the condition of my eye -- the cornea or the mucous thing mentioned above. (My corneas actually have been in fine shape throughout my dry eye ordeal.) They just make me feel the dry eye symptoms more acutely.

As long as your eyes are carefully and regularly monitored by a doc to see how their actual health is faring, I don't see any reason not to try contacts. If they're uncomfortable or they begin damaging your eyes, you can just stop wearing them.