Are you Tearing or Ripping your Soft Contacts Frequently?

Sometimes we have patients who have torn or ripped a contact once or more than once. They wonder what they did wrong. Here is some advice if this is you.

1. Avoid touching your contacts with your nails or pinching them too tight with the pads of your fingers.
2. If they are not approved to sleep in, don't. For more reasons than just tearing (see blog post about taking care of contacts), but sleeping in contacts dehydrates them, making them more brittle. When you take them out they are more likely to tear.
3. Dehydrated contacts are more likely to tear. If your eyes are dry or your contacts are dry by the end of the day you might want to try using rewetting drops throughout the day. They can be found in any pharmacy over the counter.
4. Put rewetting drops in 2-3 minutes before removing your contacts to make sure they are less rigid.

Picture from Bausch and Lomb Canada

1. Rewetting drops might be more important for our older patients who produce fewer tears and lower quality tears.
2. Always put your contacts in fresh solution every time you remove them and fill them up to the top of the lines in your case to make sure they are sufficently submerged every time.
3. Leave your contacts in the solution for 10 minutes before taking them out and rubbing them or rinsing them.
4. Always use good quality solutions such as OptiFree Pure Moist or ClearCare. The moisture particles in these solutions are small enough to fit in the pores of the contacts and stay with you throughout the day, opposed to wiping off as you blink.

If you consistantly have issues with tearing contacts and you are really good about caring for your contacts always check with your optometrist to see what your options are for replacing the torn ones, better care options for your particular lenses or trying a different type of contact lens.

Learn more about Opti-Free and taking care of contacts at: http://www.opti-free.com/

To learn more about our office visit our web-site at: www.visionsource-clarityeyecare.com

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