Exploring contact lens opportunities for patients above the age of 40 years

Shehzad A. Naroo*, Manbir Nagra, Neil Retallic

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Purpose
Contact lenses offer a good option for patients with presbyopia, especially with improved optical designs available in modern multifocal contact lenses. Due to the ageing population there is good opportunity to increase contact lens penetration by managing these patients better. However, multifocal contact lenses achieve low penetration in the market.

Methods
A questionnaire was administered to people aged above 40 years, to investigate their perceptions of contact lenses for presbyopia. Only people, with presbyopia, who were existing contact lens wearers or willing to try contact lenses were included. Participants were recruited from United Kingdom (UK), United States of America (USA), Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

Results
Data from 1540 participants above the age of 40 years was collected, 57.9% were females and 42.1% males. Overall, 50.8% of the participants wore contact lenses, but contact lens wear was less common amongst older participants. Some data supported earlier studies, such as 6.1% wore gas permeable lenses. However, only 25% of the contact lens wearers used multifocal contact lenses. The reasons the participants wanted to wear contact lenses were similar to younger patient such as sports or cosmesis reasons. Reasons why participants had dropped out of contact lenses included discomfort and dry eye related issues. Poor visual performance with contact lenses was a reason to dropout of contact lenses for the older participants.

Conclusions
The study highlights some failings by eye care practitioners in the management of patients with presbyopia. It seems that patients of this age group are seeking suggestions and recommendations from their eye care practitioner including upgrading contact lenses and dual wear options. The day-to-day problems encountered by the contact lens wearers in this study seem to be, in the main, things that could be easily tackled by additional counselling and instruction from the eye care practitioners.
Original languageEnglish
Article number101599
JournalContact Lens and Anterior Eye
Volume45
Issue number6
Early online date16 Apr 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of British Contact Lens Association. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence

Keywords

  • Contact lenses
  • Multifocal contact lenses
  • Patient dropout
  • Presbyopia
  • Spectacles

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Exploring contact lens opportunities for patients above the age of 40 years'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this