Specular microscopy of hard contact lens wearers II

Specular microscopy was done on 65 long-term hard contact lens (CL) wearers and controls matched for age, sex, race, and refractive error. There was no difference in mean endothelial cell size between the two groups, although median cell area was slightly smaller in the CL group. Standard deviation and coefficient of variation increased as the duration of total wearing time increased and were greater in the CL group, as was skewness. In 15 long-term hard CL wearers who had discontinued their CL wear, there was a trend towards persistence of pleomorphism and polymegathism of cells compared with non-contact lens (NCL) wearers, but there was a suggestion of recovery compared with those continuing to wear CLs matched for duration of wear.