Your Eyes, Your Lifestyle: The Benefits of Contact Lenses

Toric contact lenses are designed for individuals with astigmatism. Astigmatism occurs when someone has an irregularly shaped cornea and therefore experiences blurriness at all distances. This can make vision correction more difficult because your prescription can vary across your cornea.

Toric lenses have varying prescriptions across the lenses, giving them the ability to counter corneal astigmatism and giving you crisp, clear vision. Toric lenses are designed to sit on your eye in a very particular way to ensure the prescriptions in the lens match up with the prescription of your eye. To make sure this happens these lenses must be carefully designed and fitted to ensure they stay in the correct position and do not rotate.

Patients with astigmatism also experience presbyopia as they age. Multifocal toric contact lenses work like standard toric lenses to correct distance vision while also correcting presbyopia, allowing for clear vision during close up activities like reading.

Some patients have difficulty wearing contact lenses because they have “hard-to-fit” eyes. While these patients have been told in the past they can’t wear contact lenses, scleral lenses have changed that. Scleral contact lenses are like ordinary lenses but with an increased surface area. They cover both the cornea (like standard lenses) and the sclera (the white portion of your eye), leading to increased stability by keeping the lens in place and minimizing slippage.

Rigid gas permeable (RGP) contact lenses are designed from a rigid material that allows oxygen to pass through it. Because gas permeable contact lenses are sturdier than standard, soft contact lenses they also tend to last longer. Because of their rigidity, which allows them to maintain their shape even while you blink, some patients find that they experience clearer vision than with other types of contact lenses.