Do you wear contact lenses?

Contact lenses, like eyeglasses or LASIK, can correct your nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.

While some people enjoy making a fashion statement with eyeglasses, others prefer their appearance without them. Contact lenses can achieve this without irreversible refractive surgery. Contact lenses can also provide a full field of unobstructed vision, which is great for sports.

Contact lenses have been around for more than a hundred years. During that time, many advancements have allowed just about everyone to wear contact lenses. If you were told in the past that you couldn't wear contact lenses, odds are that's not true today. There are more convenient and healthy contact lens options than ever.

If you're new to contact lenses, your first step is to see an eye doctor. In the United States, contact lenses are a prescription item, just like pharmaceuticals. They must be prescribed and properly fitted by an eye care professional (ECP). Your ECP will evaluate your visual needs, your eye structure, and your tears to help determine the best type of lens for you.

The many types of contact lenses currently available can be grouped in various ways according to:

• What they're made of
• How long you wear them without removal
• How often you dispose of them
• The design of the lens

To determine which contact lens is right for you, first, your contacts must address the problem that is prompting you to wear lenses in the first place. Your contact lenses must provide good vision by correcting your myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, or some combination of those vision problems.

Second, the lens must fit your eye. To do that, lenses come in tens of thousands of combinations of diameter and curvature. Of course, not every lens brand comes in every "size."

Your ECP is skilled in evaluating your eye's physiology, and your eyesight, to determine which lens best satisfies the two criteria above.

Third, you may have another medical need that drives the choice of lens. For example, your ECP might pick a particular lens if your eyes tend to be dry.

Finally, consider your "wish list" of contact lens features — colors, for example, or overnight wear.

When you and your ECP decide on the right lens for you, you'll be given a contact lens prescription. You'll be able to buy a supply of lenses from your ECP or from the many other outlets that sell contact lenses.

from: allaboutvision