Measuring Daily Disposable Contact Lenses against Nonwearer Benchmarks.

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology and Vision Science
• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Contact lenses aim to replicate the natural eye experience for refractive error correction.
• Daily disposable soft lenses are a popular choice for vision correction.
• Assessing lens performance against non-wearer benchmarks is crucial for product development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the comfort, vision quality, and adverse events associated with daily disposable contact lenses.
• To compare the performance of daily disposable contact lenses with emmetropes (those with normal vision) and spectacle wearers.
• To determine if current daily disposable contact lenses provide a non-wearer experience.

Main Methods:

• A three-month clinical study involving 201 daily disposable contact lens wearers, 34 spectacle wearers, and 40 emmetropic non-wearers.
• Participants rated vision quality and comfort on a scale of 1 to 10 at the beginning and end of each day.
• Corneal infiltrative events were monitored, and statistical comparisons were made between groups.

Main Results:

• Initial comfort was similar across all groups, but comfort declined throughout the day for all lens wearers.
• End-of-day comfort for emmetropes was significantly better than for two specific lens types (B and D).
• Emmetropes reported better vision quality than spectacle wearers and two lens types (A and B). Corneal infiltrative events occurred in 0% of emmetropes, 2.9% of spectacle wearers, and 2.4-7.5% of lens wearers.

Conclusions:

• Some daily disposable contact lenses provide comfort and vision indistinguishable from emmetropes under study conditions.
• While corneal infiltrative event rates were not statistically different between lens wearers and non-wearers, the study lacked sufficient power for definitive conclusions.
• Further research with larger sample sizes is needed to fully assess the safety profile regarding corneal events.