The US has the lowest usage of daily disposable lenses in the world.In 2003 43% of soft lenses prescribed were daily disposable with the UK second highest.Any ideass why you are so behind? Are practicioners in US afraid consumers might be more likely to source dailies from other channels than wearers of other lens types.
I need torric lenses and they are expensive. Daily disposables would be expensive. I'm not made of money :(
Peter-Originally Posted by peter
price is generally what gets the consumer in my practice. Maybe the 1-day Acuvue class action suit also has people discouraged.
I don't really think it's a big deal....... really.
Jana Lewis
ABOC , NCLE
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
Joseph Roux
Jana, what is the most common lens modality in your practice, daily, fortnightly
or monthly?
In the uk it tends to be either monthly or daily, but i am told that 2 weekly is the most popular option in the US.
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
I can tell you that in my practice, in Canada, we do mostly a mix of Monthly and Bi-Weekly. We do not traditional wear. We also have a small clientele that wear only daily's. Personally for myself, I only like the daily's for trips and camping, but I prefer my bi-weekly's otherwise.
2 Week disposibles seem to go over better here.
Jana Lewis
ABOC , NCLE
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
Joseph Roux
Fortnightly, here in the colonies! Most manufacturers position their best products that way. Weekly would be even better, as it's easier to remember, like monthly is easier to remember. Monthly replacement is just "not disposable enough" for my liking, since patients almost universally add 50% to the lifetime of any lens.
I am intrigued by the possibilities that daily disposable CLs offer. I can envision the situation in the not too distant future that we will classify CL wearers as "full-time", and prescribe continuous wear lenses, or we will classify them as "part-time", and prescribe single-use traditional HEMA lenses. Ciba is making this more possible by delivering daily torics and multifocals, and, of course, the silicone hydrogel lens.
so , are bio 55, freq 55 etc sold as a 2 weekly lens in the US, because as far as
i am aware the only genuine 2 weekly lens is acuvue all the others are sold as monthly lenses in the UK.
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
Biomedics is a bi-weekly but can be a monthly, and there is also Focus 1-2 week.
focus is also sold here as a 4 weekly lens, i think the manufacturers are being
very clever, they are either selling you guys a "monthly lens" but telling you it is
a two weekly, thus making you and your clients buy twice as many lenses as they actually need. Alternatively and less profitably they are selling the European market a two weekly lens as a monthly.
From personal experience i know that acuvue lenses are best discarded after 2 weeks, it is designed, and marketed as a 2 weekly lens.I dont understand how these other companies get away with it.
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
Ikon,
Lenses are so similar for the most part that there is no tangible difference between lenses specified for monthly replacement and 2 week replacement. They are interchangeable. It comes down to pricing and marketing.
2 weeks, if affordable, beats monthly. Daily, if affordable, beats weekly. It's always good to throw the lenses away ASAP, as long as it's practical.
No Focus has their monthly lens and then they have a second lens called 1-2 Week.
I'm representing the novice's view here so be patient with me. I've never known anything but daily disposables and they're great - no hassle (which I understand the cleaning process can be). They cost me about 75p a day. Lots of people I know prefer them to regular contacts because they're so easy to use. Only disadvantage I think is that sometimes you might want to wear them for part/half a day (like in the evening) but you've effectively 'wasted' 8 hours wear.
My optician told me it would be okay to wear them everyday if I wanted to as long as I didn't wear them too long (ie more than 12 hrs). I'm -2.25 so can get by but I'd be interested to know what the professionals here think of that statement. Seems like alot of wear to me.
I agree drk, dailies and silicon hydrogels are always my first suggestion to patients.
I have to say, that i do find a significant difference in the peformance of say
acuvue 2 to biomedic 55, even if both were discarded on 2 weekly basis, patient
feedback suggests the acuvue stays wetter, and can be worn longer, than the
biomedic or frequency 55.I would be interested to find out if anyone else has
experienced this.
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
everybody is different melissa, i have known clients who can only tolerate lenses
for 4 or 5 hours, others can keep them in for 16 hours and still be comfortabe.
12 hours is an average, however it will also depend on your enviroment i.e. air conditioned office, lots of pc work dont help.
you can usually tell if you are wearing the lenses for too many hours for your eyes liking, look at your eyes regularly, especially where the sclera meets the
edge of the cornea, if you are overwearing you wil notice an increase in redness, also the blood vessels will be more prominent.
your optician should check this out when you go for an aftercare visit.
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
Is that 43% of lenses or 43% of prescriptions, since a prescription for daily replacement results in a great many more individual lenses than a bi-weekly?
I think the main benefit to daily replacement is still just convenience. Sure, it's nice to have a brand new lens at each insertion, but the physiological benefits are not as great as perhaps a high Dk silicone hydrogel. I find that patients have a difficult time justifying the huge difference in price just for the sake of convenience.
what would you reccomend for a patient wanting to wear lenses 2 or 3 times a week. ?
To find out what,s happening in the UK optical market:
http://theOptom.com
Have you guys tried the Day and Nights?
I just gave them a try. I wanted to see how they were after wearing them straight for a while. Over time they got more comfortable, but I still find the Acuvue 2's more comfortable. Here is the thing. I wanted to check to see what my new refraction would be, because I am getting new frames. So I took them out and couldn't see properly out of my glasses. Then I was auto-refracted and it read 11 diopters of cylinder. Then I was refracted and I was refracted with 2 diopters of cylinder. I have never had cylinder in my life. However a few hours later it was back to normal again.
Something was very wrong with your fit, For-Life!
Ikon, I agree that not all 2wk lenses are the same, when you get down to the finer details, and I do like Vistakon's products, too.
Melissa, 12 hrs. is a very average wearing time. 12-16 hrs. is acceptable with high transmission lenses, and the Acuvue 1-day is.
With my k's the 8.4 basecurve was the choice for me. I currently wear the Acuvue 2 with the 8.3 basecurve.
Drk (and anyone else who has fit them), how have you found the Focus toric dailies? We've only tried them on 2 patients, but the feedback has been so bad that the ODs aren't really interested in trying it out on anyone else. We have a few patients using the progressive dailies, but again the ODs are finding much better fitting success with other (monthly) designs.
So, in terms of the silicone hydrogel lenses, do you always prescribe them as extended-wear lenses? I'd estimate that only about 10% of our patients who are currently wearing Night & Day or PureVision use them on a continuous basis. The ODs prescribe them as a daily wear lens with the option for occasional overnight use.
I advice daily disp. lenses to all patients that can wear them. My wife and daughter both wear them and I feel they are the healthiest lens choice. Clinically this is the only group of patients that I see that have near zero ocular complications. The biggest reason patients seem to choose other modalities is cost. The $400 average yearly cost is more than most people are willing to pay. Personal priorities seem to place eyecare below other consumable goods. More value is placed on a Starbuck's Venti or cell phone service. I have seen patients ***** about paying $160/yr for 4 boxes of toric disposable lenses, a specialty medical device and think nothing of getting their hair colored which cost more and only last a couple of months.
I wonder if the negative effect of wearing daily replacement lenses for weeks is any better or worse than wearing bi-weekly replacements lenses for months?
I wonder if if wearing hydrogel lenses bi-annually is any better or worse than wearing weekly EW's for two months.
Don't tell me I don't have control of my patients. Well all know that we have pretty young stubborn people that do this and are going to continue doing this reguardless of what we say. I had one yesterday (a beautiful young college student who in the past has been treated for ulcers in the past) who insists on "wearing them til they get cloudy or uncomfortable" then I replace them. And the woman didn't even know the lenses she was wearing were approved for EW at all.
The doctor was Rx-ing silicone hydrogels because she said she was going to keep on doing this "I'm just so... busy at college." The doctor, her mother and I (I even did the close your eyes, put an artificial eye in hand and threaten her trick) could not convince her to become the least bit more responsible.
Now you can tell me you have better control of your patients, but if you do, you will be full of it.
The more we tell these "customers" (spoiled idiots) a lens is approved for or the more-safe it is, the more they will abuse it.
Chip
Saw a patient a couple of weeks ago who has been wearing Focus Toric as a 3 month EW lens since at least 1997. She's been a contact lens wearer for 19 years, and she insists she knows much better than the doctor what is best for her eyes. Every year, they both go through the exact same warnings but nothing changes. I swear, the second I can get my hands on PureVision torics, I'm calling her in for a fitting.
Hmmm...I'm going to have to get my hands on an artificial eye too. Now I want to try your trick Chip.:bbg:
Haven't tried the Focus T daily, but they are very dumbed-down, due to the fact that parameters are being very limited. If I recall, they have one cylinder power (-0.75) and two axes (90 and 180) and NO ORIENTATION MARKING, since you don't really need to modify them. You just see if it's helpful or not, compared to the sphere. It's actually sort-of genius.
The Focus Progressives are clearly inferior to the B&L SLMF.
Ultimately, the cost and lesser vision options in daily disposable, and the unavailability of a silicone toric/MF is what has delayed my prophetic vision of full-time silicone FW use and part-time HEMA daily disposable use. It's just sci-fi right now.
For-life: I admittedly didn't see those lenses on your eye. I can't image the large amount of cylinder that was induced! It's baffling.
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