View Poll Results: Which of the following options applies to you?

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  • I work in the CL industry ( 3 O¡¯s or CL related) and totally disagree with you(this thread¡¯s author). There is no one cent of truth in your post.

    2 14.29%
  • I work in the CL industry and partially agree with you (talking about being vague, I do have this option).

    6 42.86%
  • I work in the CL industry and totally agree with you and have long given up the unprofitable CL business.

    0 0%
  • I am a CL consumer and skeptical about what you said. I will still fully comply with everything the CL industry recommend in the eye care system (annual eye exam, replacement schedule, disinfection) just to be on the safe side.

    2 14.29%
  • I am a CL consumer and totally agree with you. I too, never comply with everything the CL industry recommend.

    3 21.43%
  • I am a CL consumer and totally agree with you. Your post makes me think of the CL industry differently from now on.

    1 7.14%
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Thread: Disposable CL may last much longer than the CL makers want you to know

  1. #1

    Disposable CL may last much longer than the CL makers want you to know

    I had tried soft lenses first and then RGP for many years and eventually gave up both because of the unbearable discomfort. I had switched back to eyeglasses for 5 years and thought that I would kiss the CL goodbye for good until I went to an OD office inside a local COSTCO store to have my eyeglasses prescription renewed around half year ago. The OD talked me into wearing soft CL again. The deal was that I paid the $80 fitting fee and would get as many trial lenses as I needed. After 8 different trial lenses on both eyes and 2 months later, I finally got the perfect fit (The average is 2 fittings per eye for toric lens wearers, so I felt a little bit embarrassed when I called the OD for the last trial).

    I am currently and happily wearing the CV Encore Torics (Material : 45% methafilcon A, 55% water). Based on the information posted in many CL sales websites ( for example, https://www.smartviewcontacts.com/pr...uctType=Weekly), this is a bi-weekly replacement CL. However, I have been wearing the same pair for 4 months already, and they are still going strong. My CL awareness reduces with time too. I take care of the lenses like normal daily wear lenses and spend at least 5 minutes to clean up the lenses every day. Instead of following faithfully the no rub instruction recommended by the no rub MPS(which may cost up to $370 annually) , I also use daily cleaner and low cost saline solution everyday for better cleaning and more saving in MPS. I think that the extra minutes per day is the time well spent to do the saving. I paid $50 (taxed included) for 12 lenses from the SAM's club. Imagine the amount I can save in the long run. Of course, if you can afford to spend only one minute a day to do the disinfection, you have better stick to the manufacturer's suggested replacement schedule.

    I have done enough research to convince myself that the Encore Toric (and probably many other brands) can last much longer than the manufacturer claims. I believe that the lenses will last as long as other daily wear lenses and may not need to be replaced unless they start to have wear and tear. However, the different replacement lenses in the market are made of many different types of materials. I must emphasize that there is no guarantee that other brands' replacement lenses can be used longer than the planned schedule. Your eyes may also have more than normal protein build up on the CL that prevents you from prolonging the CL lifetime. You just have to do your own research to find out. Your OD may be very tight lips about this issue because of conflict of interest. The Internet is a very good source to start your own research. The following is my direct encounters with some ODs regarding this issue and my own investigation. For those 3 Os (Opticians, Optometrists, and Ophthalmologists, right?) who want to 'respond' that I am jeopardizing my eyes, please read on before you make your point.

    THE MOTIVATION

    Even though the Encore Toric is a bi-weekly lens based on the advertisements (The CV website is very vague about the replacement schedule, I guess that they have learnt from the Acuvue class action lawsuit.), my OD told me that if I used the No Rub MPS, and rub the lens every time before disinfection, the lens should last for a month. At first, I thought that he was really trying to save me money. However, I pressed a little bit further and asked him the direct question : "If I treat this lens like a regular daily wear lens, why can't it last longer?". His answer was that the lens composition might change over time due to the disinfecting solution chemicals and the enzymes. I was very skeptical about his answer because if he approved a 2-week lens to be used for a month, then the lens had to be chemically stable for at least 4 weeks but would start to deteriorate after a month according to his opinion. I did not think that the FDA would approve an unstable product with such a small margin of error.

    I also asked the OD's opinion regarding the Acuvue daily disposable lens lawsuit. He just tried to steer away from the topic and talked about something else.
    (http://www.jnj.com/news/jnj_news/20020306_1029.htm - It is a class action lawsuit filed in Camden, New Jersey, in 1996, and involves allegations that Vistakon's marketing of ACUVUE® and 1-DAY ACUVUE® lenses created the misleading impression among consumers that the less expensive 1-DAY ACUVUE® lens was different from the ACUVUE® lens and should not be used for the same wear schedule as the ACUVUE® lens, when in fact both lenses are medically suitable for the same wear schedules. The action did not question the quality or safety of the lenses. )

    A while ago I walked into a local OD private practice store and had a chat with the OD regarding the replacement schedule issue. He told me that the FDA approved the lens to be used for two weeks, and that was what he would tell his patients. Was he trying to cover his butt or something else?

    Both ODs did not give me a satisfactory answer. It appeared to me that they were hiding something. I decided to do a little research and find out the answer myself. No doubt the Internet is my best resource for this.



    THE RESEARCH

    The Acuvue class action lawsuit that I mentioned above was really the first hint that made me puzzle about the real lifetime of my CL.

    A web site from the University of Waterloo, School of Optometry talks about soft lens material (http://www.optometry.uwaterloo.ca/clj/fw_spherical.pdf ). That web site has a lot of useful technical information about many popular soft lenses in the market. It shows the material composition of CV Encore, and indicates that it is a monthly replacement lens. I also found out from the same web site that Sunsoft Toric has the exact composition of CV Encore Toric, except that the Sunsoft lenses are also approved for daily wear and extended wear. The Sunsoft Toric Div I in particular is designed for daily wear, and it is made of the same material as CV Encore Toric. The price is much more expensive than CV because you can specify any degree of Axis ( I believe that this is a custom made lens). Here is my point, if two toric lenses use the same material, and one is approved for daily wear, why can't the other one also be used for daily wear?


    And with more web surfing, I bumped into the CL Spectrum VisionCare Forum web site (http://www.visioncareforums.com/forums.asp) which has a lot of insightful exchanges from many ODs in the Optometric Management Forum (http://www.visioncareforums.com/foru...=22&siteid=vcf). One of the convincing clues proving that my replacement lens can last longer than I thought was from a post by a user called 'icare' (a practicing OD or something similar, I believe) in the Optometric Management under the thread “diagnostic lens fee?(http://www.visioncareforums.com/show...904&siteid=vcf). The following is the post:

    Anyway, back on the topic....

    I've given a lot of thought to charging a pre-order fee for the first set of 'trials.' I've had too many walk and leave me short another bank lens.

    I'd like to put the charge in effect. Eventually, I probably will. Patients are quickly learning that they can cheaply obtain a pair of trials that they will wear as an old conventional lens as long as they can. I'm tired of giving away lenses that are never really paid for.

    Contact lens fitting fees have to rise, again.
    What really struck me is the statement "Patients are quickly learning that they can cheaply obtain a pair of trials that they will wear as an old conventional lens as long as they can." Here is the confession of an OD who unconditionally opened his kimono in front of everyone and told us the naked truth. Notice that he was not even being specific about a particular brand. Based on his/her comment, it seems like other brands' replacement lenses may also last longer than the advertised schedule.

    Based on an article, (http://www.optistock.com/spotlight5.htm ), up to 1/3 of ODs' life supporting income comes from selling CL. No wonder they have the most incentive to have the patients replace the lens within the shortest period of time. The article also mentioned that only 50% of the CL wearers complied to the replacement schedule. Look like one half of the folks out there had already figured out the 'Well kept secret' long before I did. But again, I am a late comer.

    Someone who has knowledge about the CL business told me later that
    the FDA does not approve or regulate CL replacement schedule. The FDA's only concern is with wearing schedule on the eye (daily wear versus extended wear). Replacement schedule has always been a function of sales and marketing people concocting a scheme to garner more dollars through greater usage or disposability.
    Actually one thing I learn from the CL industry is that if they do not want the public to know the truth, they will be very vague about the facts so that the public can't sue them for misleading.




    THE STATISTICS

    A complying CL (disposable, planned replacement) wearer can easily spends $400 to $600+ a year on the CL care ($80-$100 for CL fitting, $350 for daily disposable CL or $250 CL + $100 to $200 solution for planned replacement, another $50 for rewetting drops for those who still need it). According to the same article(http://www.optistock.com/spotlight5.htm ), there are 80million people in the whole world wearing CL in year 2000, and around 70% of the 33million US CL wearers use either 1-2 week disposable or planned replacement CL. If every one of the 23 million wearers complies with the replacement schedule, the US CL (just the disposable and planned replacement) market alone should be at least $5.8 billions ($250*23millions) a year and not just the $3 billions for worldwide CL market that the report said. These numbers shows that the compliance rate is really much less than the reported 50% (probably around 20% or less)



    MORE ABOUT COMPLIANCE

    I have read many posts written by the 3 O's in different eye care forums talking about 'non-compliance' of the CL wearers resulted in a lot of horrible 'eye-popping' stories. Have those people working in the CL industry ever thought for a second that those poor victims are a result of their own 'greed' From a CL consumer’s point of view, why does the he/she need an eye exam. annually instead of every 2 to 3 years? By law, the corrective lens prescription lasts for only 1 year. Who is going to benefit more from this law, the ODs or the CL wearer? The eye care system (from CL to disinfection solutions and rewetting drops) are also excessively expensive. I think that as long as there are buyers, the eye care companies can charge as much as they want, or this is just another way for the public to pay back for those multi-million dollars lost/settled by the eye care companies from the multiple class action lawsuits.

    The end result is that the majority of the CL users ranging from 'novice' to 'seasoned veterans' will never fully comply with the instructions recommended by the eye care system. On one side, the CL industry create all kinds of innovative and $mart(=greedy?) ways in the eye care system trying to squeeze as much money as possible from the consumers, and on the other side, the consumers just try every possible way to spend less. The CL industry need to change their business models by reducing eye care cost and stop ‘fooling?the public if they want to survive in the long run. The consumer's health will benefit from the lower cost(like go to eye exam more often, use more disinfection solution, and change lenses more often at reduced costs) because of the higher compliance rate. Remember what happened to those PC shops that thought that they could keep selling PC for 50% profit margins at the price of $4000 a system less than 10 years ago? None of them survive today had they not changed the business models, and a much better performance PC is now sold for 10 times less. Today, a PC is as common as TV in each family. Also, the $400 DVD several years ago is now sold for $60. Will that happen to CL or is that happening now?

    $500 plus a year for CL system is still very prohibitive to the majority of the population who need corrective lenses. There are 6.3 billion people on this planet, and 80 million CL wearers are not even 1.5% of the world population. The annual cost of the CL care must go down substantially to $100 range ($40 fitting, $40 solution, $20 CL or some similar combinations) in order to lure the vast amount of the untapped population to use CL. It takes only 250million CL users to become a $5 billion worldwide CL market annually based on my simplified model. I think that it is very possible if the CL industry is less greedy about the huge profits that they are getting now. Volume is 'King'.




    MY AFTERTHOUGHT

    Before the Internet Age, the OD's words were like gospel, because if I could not verify them easily, I had better believe them. Before the introduction of the replacement lenses, I treated my only pair of expensive and uncomfortable CL with uproots delicacy. I hated them (the discomfort part) but I could not afford to damage or lose them(I found out recently from the new replacement lenses can actually stand a lot of abuse by heavy digital rubbing. I would never rub the old lenses like this.). I think those days were long gone

    In the old days, I was so envious/jealous of those people who lived so comfortably with their CL. I really thought that those people faked about the CL comfort. I believed that my bitter CL experience was very common among other CL wearers with astigmatism. This is the first time in my life that I really enjoy the new lenses and appreciate the technological advance in the CL field. The reason that I am posting this thread is because I am trying to share my CL experiences with the general public, and hopefully some will benefit from my findings without spending a big chunk of money. In the long run, I hope I am promoting the CL usage and not the other way.


    INTERESTING OBSERVATION

    This thread was also posted in the Contact Lens Spectrum General Discussion Forum (http://www.visioncareforums.com/foru...D=1&siteid=cls) earlier. I was actually expecting some nasty responses from some ODs or some people from the CL industry because a dollar saved by the consumers is a dollar taken away from their pockets (at least in the short term). But almost two weeks has gone, and I got only one candid response out of more than 200 hits.

    I thought that the post there would touch some nerves among the CL industry personnel, and trigger a lot of responses. Maybe the nail had hit right at the central nerve, and it became so 'deadly' quiet. Or, am I spreading 'Communism' inside a 'Democratic' world?

    Any comment from any 3 O's in this forum?

    In order to get some feedback from the readers, please participate in the poll just for fun.

  2. #2
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    Why bother?

    Well, dyip, I think that since you have so thoroughly researched this and obviously come to the "right" conclusion, that anyone who disagrees with you is going to get scorned. So what's the point?

    Why does everyone think the 3 O's (or at least 2 of them) are money-grubbing, greedy, selfish SOBs. It's baloney. Just because you put money first doesn't mean everyone else does.

  3. #3
    Master OptiBoarder Jeff Trail's Avatar
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    With the profit margin being in the $2 or $3 for disposable who exactly is being greedy? ... Torics not being much better after you figure in all the fitting and dispensing time and having to absorb any custom fit RGP's...
    In all that big long diatribe, I did NOT see the FDA mentioned anywhere.. and that who is driving the contacts "life span" .. and since a contact falls under direct medical application you have to deal with the same standards, which is half shelf life (legally) it allows for those people who decide they know far more than any OD, MD or optician about optics and infections, which unless you following very strict procedures in cleaning and disinfecting I can pretty well wager that under a slit lamp you get to see a nice little crescent infection that follows the contact edge in about 85% of the people who "abuse" the procedures..
    this is a lost cause for a poll.. and what you are looking for is someone to back up your idea that we are ripping off the public in general when it comes to contacts.. more power to you, this is why a lot of people I know in optics are starting to stop stocking contacts.. for something that is supposed to be making us "rich" it sure is not showing up at the end of the month when doing the books.. exam pays better but against the cost of training and liability and those $16 boxes it sure is not making most people money..maybe those "mail order" places doing huge volume ..but not the opticals..
    Pretty simple for me to see for every "one" who might be abusing it and it is working I saw 20 that it was NOT working for.. so changing the system for one at the cost of doing damage to 20? ...not worth it in my book.. especially if I make NO profit in it to begin with..hey you call it "greed" I call it trying to put food on the table for my wife and daughter :) forgot we in optics are supposed to be a charity..

    Jeff "will grind for food" Trail

  4. #4
    sub specie aeternitatis Pete Hanlin's Avatar
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    When I was learning to drive, my father told me "If you speed and get caught, don't be upset with the officer- he is the same person that has to witness all the destruction accidents cause."

    Same thing with your eye doctor. Will your eyes necessarily fall out if you overwear your contact lenses? Truth is, the eye is pretty good at defending itself against the abuses we inflict upon it, so- probably not. Can you use your contacts longer than the recommendation and probably "get away with it?" Thousands of people do it every year.

    Your eye doctor makes pretty much squat out of the contact lenses s/he sells you. However, like the police officer, s/he is the same person that gets to see the college kid with the infected eye (or worse, the occasional corneal ulcer), and s/he can actually be held liable if you have a mishap related to your lenses and it can be proven that s/he did not provide you with proper instruction concerning follow-up visits, care, and replacement of the lenses.

    Given all the warnings my father gave me about speeding, I still routinely flirt with the triple digit range on my way home. I have yet to have an accident and will hopefully never have one. I have thus far "beat" the silly speed limit "suggestions" imposed by the state and probably save myself at least a minute or two on my drive home each night.

    I wish you similar good luck with your contact lenses and your eyes. Hopefully, you will also "beat" the system and never experience an eye infection, giant papillary conjunctivitis, or a corneal ulcer. Like me, you have simply chosen to justify the risk and likely think that the slow "conformists" who obey (snicker, snicker) the law are all idiots for doing so.

    You know, maybe I'll slow down and enjoy the scenery on the way home tonight- I have too much to live for... If you have things you'd like to be able to see in the future, I suggest you do a bit more conforming yourself. But, you appear to have made your decision, so I suppose I'm just back to "Good luck."

    P.S.- I neither work for a contact lens company nor for a company that profits from the sale of your lenses. This is just run-of-the-mill good advice from someone who has seen where the road you are taking can lead.

  5. #5
    Optical Curmudgeon EyeManFla's Avatar
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    I have been fitting contact lenses since 1975. I do so as a incentive for my eyewear patients to keep their total eyecare needs here at my office. Contact lenses are, at best, a break even proposition. The amount of time spend doing I & Rs more than eat up any little profit to be made.

    As far as extended life of contacts, sure the Encore Toric can be comfortably worn for a month. However, it has been my experience that the amount of wear time an OD or an Opticians tells their patients to have has alot more to do with the habits of the individual patient and less to do with the lens itself. I had ad a friend that wore Surevues till they turned brown. Then he got upset with me because I refused to sell him anymore contacts. My reason was simple, I refused to enable his stupitidy.

    Can you sleep in an Acuvue II? With the availability to dispense the Focus Night and Day, would you still dispense an Acuvue II for extended wear? When that attorney askes if you gave the best possible extended wear available to the client who know sits at Wilmer or Hopkins waiting for that corneal transplant, what will be your answer.

    Patients will always think they know more than their doctors or opticians when it comes to wearing contacts. "They are my eyes and I know what's best!" NO, they are your eyes and we are educated to know what works best for you!

  6. #6
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    BTW, dyip, what are your credentials? Are you an MD, OD, optician, or disgruntled consumer?

  7. #7
    Bad address email on file NC-OD's Avatar
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    Oh boy, I had to jump in on this one. dyip, I have at least 10 real photos of corneal ulcers on my office computer that I would love to send to you. These are "real" photos, not some out of a book, of people who thought their eye doctors recommendation was just a suggestion.

    I spent the last 4 days at my office, including Saturday and Sunday (which I don't normally work), with a patient that "forgot' that he had contacts in. He is using 2 different antibiotics, a cycloplegic, an ointment at night and Percocet. Unfortunately, he had to learn the hard way.

    Contact lenses are similar from those of years gone by. But today, we see fewer cases of GPC, infiltrates and ulcers compared to 10 years ago, mostly because of more frequent replacement times....but only if they are followed. You can wear an Acuvue for a year...........but there really is no reason. The manufacturing process has gotten so good, that they are produced cheaply. That's the biggest difference.

    I love wearing contact lenses and HATE fitting them because it is almost a complete waste of my time. I say almost because I do it only to help patients feel better about their look and sometimes see better. I wouldn't complain for a second if I never fit another contact lens in my life. Financially, it is probably the least profitable part of eyecare......(unless your 1-800 contacts).

  8. #8
    OptiWizard
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    Dyip,
    I'll try to make this simple for you. The whole point of replacing your lenses on a regular schedule is that clean lens are better and healthier for your eyes. Not exatly rocket sceince is it? It's not some big conspiracy to seperate you from your money. Your whole post focuses completely on money and rarely if ever mentions anything about the health of your eyes. If that is your only priority, just keep doing what you are doing and I wish you the best and I hope not to see a picture of your eye in the next edition of Contact Lens Spectrum.

    Also when patients ask me what the difference is between a disp CL and the "old kind" that were worn for a year, I tell them there is no difference and the could wear the disp Cl longer but I can't think of a good reason to do it. (See top of post) If you can tell the difference when you put a new lens in then you have probably waited to long. 70-80% of the problems I use to see from contacts were caused by patients wearing dirty old lenses. Disp Cl have eliminated most of that.Wouldn't you rather do something to minimize your chance for problems instead of mazimizing it.

    A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

  9. #9
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    a little knowledge is a dangerous thing

    dyip,
    what Pete Hanlin said, what Jeff Trail said, what eyemanfla, nc-od and stopper said, believe it. All that effort put forth by the "contact lens industry" to make CL wear safe, comfortable, carefree, and affordable (and dare I say foolproof), and you are on a mission to prove them all wrong at the risk of your eyesight.
    Unfortunately we all have patients like you. Those guys at the other visioncare forum probably didn't reply because they know they won't change your mind. We spend a lot of time all day emphasizing those simple rules, and a couple hours or so a month on weekends and afterhours treating "emergency" eye infections and complications. If on their first visit, all the noncompliant, suspicious, conspiracy-sniffing patients like you came in "wearing their sign", I'd happily pay them to go away.

    Tell me, how long do you go between oil changes? If you are careful, that styrofoam coffee cup could probably last a month.

    One more thing. Just because you saw it on the internet doesn't mean that it's true.

    Good Luck
    Jon

    "Every problem has a solution that's simple, easy, and wrong"

  10. #10
    Wow! Shouldn’t I feel like shooting myself in the foot by starting this thread? . Luckily, my eyes are still as healthy as yesterday. I hope. As I pointed out in the post, the scary eye stories that all of you posted here(while deeply appreciated) are nothing new to me before I started this thread. By all means, your responses in this thread so far are really good lessons for those CL wearers who blindly abuse their CL. However, let me repeat again in case you didn’t catch it earlier- my post said:
    Have those people working in the CL industry ever thought for a second that those poor victims are a result of their own ‘greed’?…..
    Just go back to the top and read again. You guys really know how to turn the table around.

    Are you guys/gals talking to me or to the CL abusers. I hope it is the latter. Please don’t make it sound like I am the CL abuser and try to beat the system. Also, there is nothing in my post that advocates CL abusing like what you guys/gals suggested in your posts. Instead I said that

    Of course, if you can afford to spend only one minute a day to do the disinfection, you have better stick to the manufacturer’s suggested replacement schedule.
    and also

    However, the different replacement lenses in the market are made of many different types of materials. I must emphasize that there is no guarantee that other brand’s replacement lenses can be used longer than the planned schedule. Your eyes may also have more than normal protein build up on the CL that prevents you from prolonging the CL lifetime. You just have to do your own research to find out.
    Do you think a CL abuser would say something like that? One of you even went further to say that

    and you are on a mission to prove them all wrong at the risk of your eyesight
    Can the one who posted this point out which particular statement in my post that would lead you to think that I am a CL abuser to put my eyesight at risk?

    I understand that some of the stuffs that I said might not be pleasant to your ears. But how often do you hear any thoughtful feedback from your patients/customers in your career? Your posts make me think of listening to presidential nomination debates. Instead of addressing each issue point by point, each candidate just kept repeating his/her own pre-written agenda, which had no resemblance at all to the issues in debate. The funny thing was that some candidates with short attention span might totally forgot what he/she said in the beginning by the time he/she finished the last sentence and sometimes even ended up supporting the opponent’s viewpoints. At the end, the voters were all confused.

    When your posts made it sound like I am the culprit of all these CL abusing (either intentionally or unintentionally), it is called ‘thread pollution’(distortion of the thread’s author’s original intention). This method can be very successful in this kind of forum especially when the unaware reader/poster or the ones with their own agenda just follows the information from the last post and ignores what the previous posts have said. Every poster just distorts the opinion a little bit, and at the end, the original author will not even recognize anything he/she said just by reading the last post. I don’t blame you by glancing the post at the speed of light when there are so many interesting posts to keep up with everyday. One advice,

    Don't just glance through the posts at the speed of light, or you will never know what you've missed in the details. If you want to post a response, you've better understand what the author is trying to say first.
    Jo, are you listening?

    Otherwise, how can you have quality discussion if the only thing in your mind is your own agenda. I hope that you ODs will not bring this kind of bad reading habit to your work especially when reading your patient’s multiple page chart. It can be very dangerous. Don’t tell me that it has never happened, especially for those ODs who see more than a dozen patients/customers per hour. Also think about how many unnecessary deaths in this country annually caused by the negligence of the Medical profession. The double organ transplant tragedy recently is one. While I still remember, please also write legibly on the patient prescription in case you are not doing it.


    The following is a post from a frustrated OD in the Contact Lens Spectrum Forum:

    well, when OAT is as easy as SAT, you will know the quality of it's taker and graduates. it's the some who ruin the rest of the profession. dam, why can't we set a higher standard for all the incoming students? but when school need tuition, you know what's gonna happen. that's exactly what we are having now. so, what the name of OD doing 10 buck exam? just wait, we will have free exam soon with free glasses along with free case/contact/oil change/checking account.... when a 20K car needs no down payment/no interest/ no finance charge, free exam doesn't seem that bad after all.
    Is OAT really as easy as SAT? That makes me really worry.


    Read my original post carefully, and you will find out that I may be one of the most complying CL wearers any of you 3O’s can find on earth. And of course, if every CL wearer is as complying as I am and has the benefit of tremendous savings as a result, I don’t think that the financial prospect of the CL industry will be healthy if they don’t change the business model as I mentioned earlier. NC-OD will not have that many red-eye patients waiting in his office, and he too probably has to rethink his business plan.

    I decide to use saline solution and daily cleaner on top of No Rub MPS (isn’t it just a saline solution plus some other ingredients?) for better cleaning and disinfection, and I spend at least 5 minutes to do that at the end of the day. Can any of you dispute this cleaning method? How did any of you instruct your patient to disinfect his/her ‘old conventional’ daily CL before the No Rub MPS existed? As I pointed out in the post, Sunsoft’s daily and even extended wear CL have exactly the same material as the Encore Toric, so I just treat my Encore Toric as a daily CL, so what is wrong with that? I think I am 100% in compliance with the standard disinfection procedure recommended by the eye care industry for daily CL. Unless any of you can explain to me clearly that even though Encore Toric and Sunsoft Toric use the same material, the Encore is good for just 1 month because bra ….bra….bra… , and Sunsoft Toric is good for daily or extended wear because bra….bra…..bra….

    Also from the response of my thread in Contact Lens Spectrum, the person also said

    When J&J first introduced 2-week disposables, disinfection systems were inferior to what is available today. So, the whole "fresh lens" concept was valid and offered consumers a real benefit. But today with the efficacy available in MPS, monthly or quarterly replacement is probably more valid than the 2-week replacement still being "recommended" by the CL manufacturers
    What is your expert opinion on this?

    I am not complying with what the No Rub MPS instruction recommends because I think the instruction is just stupid at best if the intention is for the health of the CL wearer and not for grabbing more money from the consumers. One of the posts titled- Alcon Optifree “No Rub” multipurpose solution?? in this forum by mullo summarized it very well:

    My point is that digital rubbing or something rubbing/moving against the lens is (I believe) required to do a "proper" lens cleaning. If you were to fill your sink with
    dish detergent and only soak the dishes, but not rub them, would they come out as clean??? Your other alternative is using a dishwasher (ultrasonic cleaning unit to us optiminds or the like). To actually clean the dishes better than dish soap and rubbing would require a very highly potent solvent. If a no rub contact lens solution were to clean as well as a digital rub would you want this in your eye??? Mullo
    There is ‘good non-compliance’ and ‘bad non-compliance’, and the difference between the two is big as you guys/gals pointed out.


    Stopper, jon 22, NC-OD,

    It's not some big conspiracy to seperate you from your money. Your whole post focuses completely on money and rarely if ever mentions anything about the health of your eyes.
    Do you want to elaborate on the multiple class action lawsuits in the CL industry? I am all ears.

    As for the health of my eyes. Just read above. Please correct me if I am wrong about my disinfection procedure.

    Of course a big part is about money. Didn’t you read the STATISTICS section of my post carefully? The tone of the ODs who posted here sounded somehow different from the posts that they posted in the Contact Lens Spectrum Optometric Management General Discussion Forum. The readers have to see it to believe it. I learnt that many of you OD’s have accumulated $100K to $140K of student loan just to get the ‘Dr’ initial in front of your name and before collecting the first penny from your first pay check. Many of you ODs should be very familiar with the candid exchanges in the Contact Lens Spectrum Forum regarding the loan issue. Just check out the top 5 most read threads in the Optometric Management General Discussion Forum over there(http://www.visioncareforums.com/foru...t=0&siteid=vcf). How much do you think you have to make a year in order to pay off your debt within 10 years and still live comfortably? As I also said in the other forum (http://www.visioncareforums.com/show...053&siteid=vcf) that
    everyone just wants everyone else to pay for his/her own debt, and the medical professions are very good at this.
    Also, think about your dentist if you’re sure what I mean. Just do some reading over there, and you will know why I think that the ODs see the dollar sign first before they see the patients’ eyes (at least in this country). One curious question for NC-OD, what are the top 5 most discussed topics that the members talk about in the www. Seniordoc.com (only for certain personnel in the Optometry field)? Don’t tell me that the word ‘money’ or ‘finance’ or ‘debt’ was never mentioned there.



    One more thing.
    Just because you saw it on the internet doesn't mean that it's true.
    You are right about this. There is a CL sales web site which tries to sell the Encore Toric as a weekly disposable lens. You can also change oil to your car every week. It sure won’t hurt. In general, I check for multiple sources on the Internet before I believe in something. Good enough? I also do a lot of technical researches at work using Internet, so I can also confidently say that “Just because you saw it on the internet doesn't mean that it's NOT true.”


    PAW,
    If you read my post carefully, you should have no problem figuring out that I am neither of what you asked. I don’t have the knowledge like the great experts in this forum. That’s why I post my ideas/opinions just to get some feedback from all the great minds, and hopefully learn something new everyday, and I really do. I like my CL very much, and I still think that the generally public are paying way too much for the eye care system for no reason other than what I posted before.

    Don’t worry, I do not know any of the 3O’s in this forum personally if that is what you are asking. I work in a non-opti profession. In my field, I like to research, experience and analyze things. That explains why I like to dig deep into any topic that triggers my curiosity. The difference is that I got paid decently by doing the things in my field while I am spending my own time to write these posts. I will just consider this as a fun thing to do and an investment to develop my writing and communication skill, which I hope will further benefit my work. If you want to know a little more about me, you can go to the Contact Lens Spectrum Forum. I have a few posts (dyip) there before I discovered this forum last week. If my memory does not fool me, I know what field that you are in (ie, whether you breathe the same air as the ODs) before you deleted it from your profile. So I am not surprised at the way you responded to my post.

    Let me make a wild guess of your sex. You are a female. How do I know? The knee jerk reaction to the slightest ‘confrontation’ from a female is usually ‘irrational without a good reason’. (nothing personal, just my observation) Now, I can feel your blood pressure start to rise and your chest pound again, and let me give you an advice (does not need a MD degree). Stand up, take several slow and deep breaths, walk around and relax. Maybe listening to classical music helps. When you calm down, start to gather your thought and say whatever you want to say. Then your post will start to make sense.


    To everyone,

    There are good ODs and bad ODs, one definitely needs a lot of knowledge to become a good OD. But I don’t really need to know as much in order to tell a bad OD from a good one and what is happening in the CL industry. Am I right? I can still use your advice ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ to me and other people that I know.

    If you guys/gals want to be philosophical, I have this one for you:“A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing too”. Why? Those experts(not just the 3O’s) who think that they know a lot are always over confident of themselves in their specialties and start to develop the bad habit of ignoring the details and stop asking themselves some fundamental questions.

    Have I cleaned up all the polluted air now? Are you ready to start all over? Please be specific in your response.


    Be a well informed consumer, I encourage the CL wearers visit the links mentioned in my post first and decide it for yourself before you vote.

    A good observer is someone who pays attention to inconspicuous details. Try to be a good observer, and you will be amazed at seeing a lot of things that other people(even the experts) don’t.

  11. #11
    Master OptiBoarder Jedi's Avatar
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    Can the one who posted this point out which particular statement in my post that would lead you to think that I am a CL abuser to put my eyesight at risk?

    this is a bi-weekly replacement CL. However, I have been wearing the same pair for 4 months already, and they are still going strong.
    That should probably do it.
    "It's not impossible. I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home."


  12. #12
    Master OptiBoarder OptiBoard Silver Supporter varmint's Avatar
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    Why would anyone try & reason with this idiot? He is the reason Optiboard should be a proffessional's only site. He is only here to create argument & has no point in any of his threads. Any coward can log onto an open forum & not give any info on themselves & try to dispute any & every comment made to his posts. Sort of like hiding in a cave & telling everyone how invincible he is!!!
    So if everyone just ignors his rantings, maybe he'll go bother someone elses forum. :angry:

  13. #13
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    dyip,
    Yes, I proudly admit I am female, I am the wife of an OD, I have 2 children, I have a Bachelors degree in Business, and I work in our private practice office. I didn't delete it from my profile. I never put it in there to begin with.

    I am not even going to respond to your other condescending comments directed to me, as they are a knee-jerk reaction to my hitting the nail on the head.

  14. #14
    Master OptiBoarder Joann Raytar's Avatar
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    Forgive me Steve, but ...

    dyip said:

    Jo, are you listening?
    Actually, no. And this is rare for me. I may have disagreed with folks, gotten into a debate or two and I may have asked that some people change their wording when their posts broke the site guidelines but I have never, that I can think of, stopped listening to any member in the past.

    You however, seem to want to post a short manuscript of your own opinions and not want to "listen" to a word anyone else has to say.

    The incident that prompts you to bring up my "not listening" to you involved the post of the damaged contact lens. Sorry, that was the best I can do. I can talk about solutions, talk about contact lenses but when it comes down to it, I cannot give you medical advice concerning how you should care for your lenses. You are the individual who asked if all solutions were created equal (don't bother to reply that you only mentioned OptiFree Express in you other thread - I know). I can only tell you that they are not equal and using the wrong solution can damage your lenses. If you want to play musical solutions (I know you decided to stick with the brand you were using but you did ask about others), the only thing I can tell you is talk to your eyecare health professional. Don't debate my stand on medical advice. We deal with issues of potential litigation everyday. In fact anyone who owns or runs a business today does, just ask McDonald's.

    Do you listen?
    And with more web surfing, I bumped into the CL Spectrum VisionCare Forum web site (http://www.visioncareforums.com/forums.asp) which has a lot of insightful exchanges from many ODs in the Optometric Management Forum (http://www.visioncareforums.com/for...D=22&siteid=vcf). One of the convincing clues proving that my replacement lens can last longer than I thought was from a post by a user called 'icare' (a practicing OD or something similar, I believe) in the Optometric Management under the thread “diagnostic lens fee?(http://www.visioncareforums.com/sho...=904&siteid=vcf). The following is the post:


    Anyway, back on the topic....

    I've given a lot of thought to charging a pre-order fee for the first set of 'trials.' I've had too many walk and leave me short another bank lens.

    I'd like to put the charge in effect. Eventually, I probably will. Patients are quickly learning that they can cheaply obtain a pair of trials that they will wear as an old conventional lens as long as they can. I'm tired of giving away lenses that are never really paid for.

    Contact lens fitting fees have to rise, again.
    The individual in the VisionCareForum post wasn't admitting anything. He was stating that patients found a way to abuse contacts. They pick up a pair of trials and wear them for indefinite lengths of time. Where do you get a clue that it is OK to wear your lenses longer than recommended out of that?

    Lastly, the your replies to Chip about the castor oil were juvenile and uncalled for. Recently you made comments to Diane and PAW, both sexist remarks, that were uncalled for. You don't have a constructive dialogue by insulting the folks you are trying to speak with. If you continue on this new track of insulting folks, they are not going to respond very kindly to your posts at all.

    This is the last time you will read a reply from me on any of these contact lens topics unless you continue to attack the other members with off topic insults.

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    Just for the record, cleaning and disinfecting are two seperate processes. Saline does not kill bacteria, doesn't clean and doesn't disinfect. It merely rinses surface debris and hydrates a lens. Part of the blame lies with us, including me, if we don't take the time to explain things to the patrient. I assume that my patients are not complient and review and stress such things at every visit. A study at Johns Hopkins showed that 80% of all contact lens cases are contaminated. So putting your "clean" contact lens in a case with saline is playing with fire.

    If I was only interested in money I would tell patients to sleep in their lenses and not clean and disinfect. I would see more red eyes ($) and sell more contacts($).. In short cleaning and disinfecting is like changing oil in your car. You don't want to wait until it starts smoking. At least you can sell the old car. In addition, when you scar most parts of the body it has "healed", a good thing. You scar the centeral cornea and you don't see.

  16. #16
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    why bother

    dyip

    Your agenda seems to be wasting people's time with halfbaked, provocative statements, arguments, and opinions. You seem to know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. Get a life.

    Jon

  17. #17
    Forever Liz's Dad Steve Machol's Avatar
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    dyip said: Let me make a wild guess of your sex. You are a female. How do I know? The knee jerk reaction to the slightest ‘confrontation’ from a female is usually ‘irrational without a good reason’. (nothing personal, just my observation)
    Sexist comments and insults like this are against the OptiBoard posting guidelines. If you continue with this, you will be banned from these forums.


    OptiBoard Administrator
    ----
    OptiBoard has been proudly serving the Eyecare Community since 1995.

  18. #18
    OptiWizard
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    Dyip,
    I'm am glad to hear you are actually being compliant with your solutions. No problem to use daily cleaner and saline to rinse your lenses but make sure you store thom in an MPS to disinfect them. Your previous posts did lead me to beleive you were not compliant. As far as Encore and sunsoft toric being the same material, there is nothing to stop you from wearing the encore for as long as you want but as I posted before. Why would you want to do that? The only reason is cost. If thats your main concern fine but no matter how well you clean that lens it will still get dirtier. If your eye tolerate that, fine but new lenses that are clean are healthier. That's not to try to scare you. it's just the answer to your question. If you don't beleive that i guess we will have to agree to disagree. I think the main conflict here is that you look at this as a consumer issue and we look at it as a health care isssue. Of course it is both. Pick your priority. I'm sorry that you feel that the services we provide have little value. I do not apologize for charging for the services I provide. I wish you good look and I hope you encounter a good eye care professional some day that will change your opinion.

  19. #19
    My deepest apologies to PAW and Diane because of my insensitive remarks in my previous posts. Even though I didn’t feel my remarks were as offensive as Steve suggested, but I do respect Steve’s decision. Without this forum, I wouldn’t have learnt as much as I did two weeks ago, and you are the people who give me a chance to voice my opinions about the CL industry(I can never imagine any OD in this country will have or spend the time listening to my lengthy BS during the office visit). It was never my intention to mount any personal offense or agenda against any poster in this forum. That was the reason that I set up the poll to avoid confrontation in the first place.


    PAW,

    The reason that the gender thing had ever brought up in the post was because of the profiling questions that you raised in your earlier post. I was just playing along with the profiling game. I respect all the women who work hard for their careers while supporting their families. At the end of the day, watching your kids grow and prosper is the biggest reward a mother can expect, and every mother deserves that.

    To respectfully answer your remark

    Why does everyone think the 3 O's (or at least 2 of them) are money-grubbing, greedy, selfish SOBs. It's baloney. Just because you put money first doesn't mean everyone else does.
    You just have to read the posts by Chip Anderson and Pete Hanlin in the thread “Contact Lenses?” in this General Discussion Forum (http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...Contact+Lenses) that I found out after posting this thread. These great minds just verified what I have been thinking all the times regarding the CL industry. I want to clarify that the ‘greed’ issue involves the whole CL industry in general, not just certain personnel.

    When an outsider wrote some ‘negative’ opinion about the CL industry, you called it ‘baloney’. When the same opinion was written by some ‘experts’ in the field, what do you call it? Naked truth?


    Diane,

    I was a little bit caught up (irrational knee jerk reaction) by all the other ‘shallow’ and ‘distorted’ cheap shots and head butts against my opinions from other posters when I responded to you regarding the ‘icon’ thing. Even though I think that there was nothing sexist and insulting in my remark at the time when I was typing the post, it was not good taste in retrospect, especially in a professional forum like this.


    Steve the moderator,

    This is part of the guidelines for posting messages to OptiBoard

    Please do not use OptiBoard to conduct a personal vendetta against any company or individual. This will not be tolerated and these posts will be removed.

    I will not remove messages merely because someone disagrees with the content or the conclusion of the poster. I will respect individual's right to speak freely. However, I do reserve the right remove messages or links to pages that are outside of the nature of this board, i.e. messages not dealing with the eyecare industry (except for messages in the Just Conversation forum.) Furthermore, I reserve the right to remove any messages or links that contain profanity, insults, racist or sexist comments, sexual content, or any of the usual offensive language. In this regard, my decision is final.
    You need to better define ‘sexist’ and ‘insult’ carefully in your forum guidelines, especially when a newcomer like me seeing different kinds of personal attacks peppered among some threads. The newcomers will get very confused about ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ OK to say.

    This is a forum open to the people from the whole world. I bet you that ¾ of the world population do not know what ‘sexist’ mean. ‘sexist’ is a very subtle term to most people, even in this country. Here is a web site that may shed some light on this topic(http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/publicat...nonsexist.html ) in case you don’t have something better already.


    sexism -. 1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women. 2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on.

    Insult - 1.a.To treat with gross insensitivity, insolence, or contemptuous rudeness. See Synonyms at offend. b. To affront or demean: an absurd speech that insulted the intelligence of the audience.
    If you think that my remark directed toward PAW was ‘sexist’ and ‘insult’, how about some remarks directed toward me by other posters, weren’t they offensive, provocative, demeaning or simply ‘insulting’? The following are just a couple examples.

    1. In the thread “Can we make this a private forum?”, Jeff Trail had some very personal remarks directed toward me
    …We answered his questions, it did not jive with his personal point of view and he didn't like it.. did you notice he only insulted posters that were female? Sounds like someone has "mommy" issues somewhere in there past…
    What made Jeff think that I am ‘HE’ and not ‘SHE’? Isn’t Jeff sexist too? Isn’t his remarks referring to my mother personal and insulting too? (You do not have to start a debate on this.) I just want you to know how subtle the term ‘sexism’ is in different people’s minds. What was he trying to provoke by mentioning my mother.

    2. vermint also made the remark
    Why would anyone try & reason with this idiot?
    Isn’t vermint’s remark insulting too?

    I was merely making a comment about an ‘icon’ that appears in your forum. If Jo concluded that my remark towards Diane was sexist, doesn’t it mean that the widely accepted ‘icon’ in your forum is sexist and provocative too? Why would the moderator allow such ‘icon’ to show up in the forum in the first place?

    I hope that this forum does not have a double standard which tolerates certain ‘preferred members’ to spread personal attacks and insults, and tries to shut up the outsider at the slightest hint of displeasure.

    I think that the decision to keep the forum ‘public’ will be a good one; otherwise, the public will have the impression of ‘What does the opti-world have to hide from us?’


    Jo,

    I have no intention to become a Optimaster, and I am trying very hard not to be ‘trigger happy’. So my posts are usually long but few.

    You wrote
    You however, seem to want to post a short manuscript of your own opinions and not want to "listen" to a word anyone else has to say.
    Why would I listen to ‘shallow’ and ‘distorted’ cheap shots and head butts? I can easily cut and paste some of those remarks to any of the threads that I don’t like, and they will become my ‘expert’ opinions. Will that sound professional to you?

    The incident that prompts you to bring up my "not listening" to you involved the post of the damaged contact lens. Sorry, that was the best I can do. I can talk about solutions, talk about contact lenses but when it comes down to it, I cannot give you medical advice concerning how you should care for your lenses…..
    Based on your explanation, you still do not understand why I said “Jo, are you listening”

    Let me try one last time so that we have a mutual understanding from now on.

    Right at the BEGINNING of my thread ‘Alcon Express MPS and No Rub MPS have same ingredients but different prices’, I wrote

    I have been using the Alcon Opti-Free Express No Rub MPS ever since I switched to soft CL (Encore Toric with 55% water content and the material is Methafilcon A)….
    Stopper’s respond to my thread was right on target, and I thought that the thread would just stop there. However, in the same thread and 8 posts later, you wrote

    You really should write up a list of questions to ask your eyecare professional. We don't know what lenses you wear, what your wear schedule is or anything about your eye health. All we can tell you is to talk to your Doctor or Optician before changing your Contact Lens cleaning methods…
    I politely responded to you in the next post

    [QUOTE]
    Jo,
    Thank you for your advice. Just read my original post again, and you will have a better idea of my intention for this thread and what kind of lens I am wearing. I really like all the enthusiastic responses from all the experts. Since my lenses still look pretty new to me(look nothing close to the picture you show me), and I am very happy with the current solution, I will not switch brand unless the new one is really much better. I did learn my lesson by using the store brand solution. [QUOTE]

    Obviously, you didn’t get my message for some reason(I know you are a very busy person), and that was why I asked you “Jo, are you listening” in my previous post when I was giving this advice to all the other posters

    Don't just glance through the posts at the speed of light, or you will never know what you've missed in the details. If you want to post a response, you've better understand what the author is trying to say first.
    Based on your latest response, you are still not getting it because you keep on distorting my original viewpoint and said that

    You are the individual who asked if all solutions were created equal…
    even though I made my point clearly that in my ‘Alcon…’ thread that

    I am a true believer that not only the lens material, but also the kind of solution you use that make a world of differences in lens comfort
    Even though I said everything correctly, but somehow the listeners just had their own way to interpret or filter thing and think of it otherwise, and ‘white’ could become ‘black’. Jo, you are not the only one. There are many posters that have the same ‘character’ in this forum, and it is this kind of ‘distortion’ that upsets the author mostly.

    You kept on saying

    The individual in the VisionCareForum post wasn't admitting anything. He was stating that patients found a way to abuse contacts. They pick up a pair of trials and wear them for indefinite lengths of time. Where do you get a clue that it is OK to wear your lenses longer than recommended out of that?
    I think that you were referring to this statement
    Patients are quickly learning that they can cheaply obtain a pair of trials that they will wear as an old conventional lens as long as they can
    What make you think that patients found a way to abuse contacts based on that statement? What is your definition of ‘abuse contacts’? Do you know the difference between Encore Toric and Sunsoft Toric?

    I hope you still remember that you had posted the following in the thread “Chip’s corner…” in this General Discussion Forum (http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...t=chips+corner)

    Quarterly vs 1-2 Week Lenses
    One more for you. Would you be able to fill me in on the differences between Optima FW (1-2 Week lenses) and Optima FW Medalist (Quarterly Lenses)? The Base Curves, diameters, water content and etc. all seem to be the same. Is the only difference the wearing schedule? That would be like handing someone two bottles of the Extra Strength Tylenol, one 25 count the other 50 count, the drug contents and percentages are exactly the same. The official dosage is two tablets every 4-6 hours. I tell the individual only take the tablets in bottle "A" every 6 hours but the tablets in the bottle "B" can be taken every 4 hours….
    and Chip’s response was
    Differences
    A far as I know the packaging and the price are the only differences. A number of companies have been in court over such similarities. Seems that I remember one of the latest was J&J for selling a One-Day that was the same as the two-week.

    I think they later changed the design of each to avoid further controversy.

    Chip
    I wrote earlier(even before I found out chip’s and your posts above)

    Actually one thing I learn from the CL industry is that if they do not want the public to know the truth, they will be very vague about the facts so that the public can't sue them for misleading.
    What a striking similarity between the two observations.



    You said
    Lastly, the your replies to Chip about the castor oil were juvenile and uncalled for.
    I thought that it was a ‘get down to the basics’ and logical approach to obtain new knowledge. I knew very little information about the new idea, and I asked the expert. The expert didn’t give me a satisfactory answer, so I did a little digging yourself and found out more about the new idea. The rest of the exchanges were just differences in opinions…. There was nothing juvenile about the whole discussion unless you meant something else. BTW, a good joke usually ends with a solid punch line and starts with a good setup. Glad to know that you folks found the Castor Oil episode amusing.

    Whenever a topic drew such controversy, there is usually some merit in it no matter which side you support. Sorry to take up so much space to explain so little things. I just do not want to leave any detail untouched.

    Jedi,

    You wrote,
    I hate to admit it, but having lunatics post once and a while, is like watching a train wreck. It's not pretty, but it's hard to look away.
    Sorry Jedi, there is no train wreck, just some background noises due to some misunderstandings that needed to be cleaned up. I am not sure if you even knew why you were so upset about by calling me ‘lunatics’.


    Stopper,

    You are a person with class, and you handle the whole situation with grace. You have tried your best to let me see things from your prospective, and I appreciated that. What more do I expect from a public forum? One’s reputation can be at stakes by saying too much. Wish you good luck to your practice/business.

    I think that one of my previous quotes might have left some readers thinking that I did not use MPS for disinfection.
    My point is that digital rubbing or something rubbing/moving against the lens is (I believe) required to do a "proper" lens cleaning. If you were to fill your sink with
    dish detergent and only soak the dishes, but not rub them, would they come out as clean??? Your other alternative is using a dishwasher (ultrasonic cleaning unit to us optiminds or the like). To actually clean the dishes better than dish soap and rubbing would require a very highly potent solvent. If a no rub contact lens solution were to clean as well as a digital rub would you want this in your eye??? Mullo
    Actually, I just agree with the first part:
    My point is that digital rubbing or something rubbing/moving against the lens is (I believe) required to do a "proper" lens cleaning. If you were to fill your sink with
    dish detergent and only soak the dishes, but not rub them, would they come out as clean???
    As I mentioned earlier in my other thread, I used the MPS for disinfection. The saline solution is just for rinsing the daily cleaner after rubbing. I also use the MPS to rinse the lenses before insertion. Just to keep the record straight, I’ve never worn my CL overnight, and I clean my CL very diligently at the end of the day.


    And I totally disagree with the part
    To actually clean the dishes better than dish soap and rubbing would require a very highly potent solvent. If a no rub contact lens solution were to clean as well as a digital rub would you want this in your eye???
    Based on my experience with Alcon No Rub MPS and other solutions, the Alcon solution is very comfortable to the eyes throughout most of the wearing period. The solution does live up to the claims that you mentioned in the other thread ‘Alcon Express…’

    I think they have a new claim about how the solution helps the lenses retain moisture and don't dry out as easily.

    On the topic of price and health

    When the OD has a new potential CL patient/customer, the OD will probably just tell him/her that the bi-weekly Encore Toric replacement lens just costs $30 for a pack of 6, sounds cheap enough, isn’t it? But in fact the CL wearer will have to spend $260 a year just for the CL alone. The price tag will be more than $700 when the person adds up the eye exam fee and the eye care system. I bet you that a lot of new potential CL wearers will just do the Lasik without a second thought when they hear the staggering price tag in the OD office. I am just trying to cut down the cost by being a ‘complying’ CL wearer in a non-conventional while safe way. My price tag is not even close to one half of $700. Price and health are both important to me. So there is a big incentive for me to keep the CL care cost down by spending extra minutes everyday to make sure the lenses are clean before disinfection.


    As far as Encore and sunsoft toric being the same material, there is nothing to stop you from wearing the encore for as long as you want but as I posted before. Why would you want to do that? The only reason is cost. If thats your main concern fine but no matter how well you clean that lens it will still get dirtier. If your eye tolerate that, fine but new lenses that are clean are healthier.
    I totally agree with you on this. I do not think what I am doing is wrong and unhealthy neither. While there are a lot of CL abusers like you ODs mentioned in many different threads, there are also a lot of CL who are as careful as I am too. The latter should not be penalized by paying the unnecessarily high price CL care that the CL industry enthusiastically recommends. The consumers should also be informed that they can have the option to wear the CL cheaply and safely like I discussed above. The CL lifetime really depends on the individual’s eyes’ biological nature and cleaning habit. I will not say that the Encore Toric or other brands’ replacement CL will last indefinitely. But the Encore should be save for half to 1 year, just like the lifetime of other daily wear CLs.

    You may have seen this article (probably around Aug, 2002) before. I just include here to refresh the memory of some people working in the CL industry: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/D...ses020821.html

    The following is quoted from that article

    Studies show that optometrists typically charge 20 percent more for contact lenses than the national average. And if consumers went to discount shops, they could, in many cases, find the same products at half the price.
    The thread “Contact Lenses” I mentioned above will also help you to understand my mind.



    You do not have to answer me, I am just asking. Did you know about the ‘complicated’ relationships among the 3 O’s and the ‘issues’ regarding the CL industry before you decided to go to Optometry? Do you still see the same picture like you did before you graduated?


    This post is no ‘cheap shot’. Please be more thoughtful in your response.

    For every action, there is a reaction. – Not exactly from Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion

  20. #20
    Forever Liz's Dad Steve Machol's Avatar
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    Sorry but I am not going to take your bait and get into a discussion of what constitutes sexist remarks. Your remarks were clearly over that line. You can either accept this, or not post on these forums anymore. The choice is yours. :)

    Furthermore, I reserve the right to remove any messages or links that contain profanity, insults, racist or sexist comments, sexual content, or any of the usual offensive language. In this regard, my decision is final.


    OptiBoard Administrator
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  21. #21
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    Steve:

    Are you sure we can't make this turkey go away?

    Chip

  22. #22
    Master OptiBoarder Joann Raytar's Avatar
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    Exclamation NOTE:

    Before responding any further to this thread, please take a look at these sites:

  23. #23
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    Thanks Jo.

    May God Smile upon you this day.

    Chip

  24. #24
    Master OptiBoarder Shwing's Avatar
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    Either that or E. Martin is back...

  25. #25
    Optical Curmudgeon EyeManFla's Avatar
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    Ok, I have a good one for you. I just had a lady come into the office wearing a NASTY looking pair of DWs. Said her eyes were burning from the contacts.

    They were a pair of B&L Medalists that she has been wearing for seven years.....here Doctor reportedly told her the lenses would last at least 5 years.

    Unfortunately...or fortunately, depending on your point of view...her Doctor died last year and she needed a new place to get contact lens care.

    Of course, when I told her about her improper wearing and lens care, she thought I was full of **** and left...

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