Clinical Performance and Patient Satisfaction of Hybrid Contact Lenses in Patients with Keratoconus

The aim of the study was to evaluate the fitting process, clinical performance, and patient satisfaction of hybrid contact lenses (HCL) in patients with keratoconus (KC).

Sixty-eight KC patients (35 female, 33 male) who were prescribed HCL were included in the study. Corneal topographic parameters, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) with eyeglasses, the number of HCL trials, prescribed HCL base curve (BC), and visual acuity with HCL were recorded from hospital records. A contact lens satisfaction survey was sent to the patients via email or WhatsApp and the data was statistically analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22.0.

The study included 110 eyes of 68 patients with a mean age of 27.34±8 years (range: 12-48 years). According to the Amsler-Krumeich classification, 35.5% of the eyes were stage 1, 50.9% were stage 2, and 13.5% were stage 3 or 4. Mean K1, K2, and Kmean values were 7.14±0.50 mm (range 5.72-8.30 mm), 6.63±0.49 mm (range 5.07-7.84 mm), and 6.89±0.48 mm (range 5.39-8.06 mm), respectively. The average number of lens trials was 1.59±0.82 (range 1-4). The mean BC of the prescribed HCL was 6.84±0.50 mm (range 5.60-8.00 mm). BCVA with glasses was 0.36±0.2 (range 0.05-0.8), and 0.80±0.14 (range 0.3-1.0) with HCL (p<0.0001). The overall survey score was 3.54 out of 5, the overall satisfaction score was 3.27, the average vision satisfaction score was 3.62, the average satisfaction score for lens insertion and removal was 3.01, and the average satisfaction score for lens comfort was 2.97.

Prescribed HCL BC is usually close to the topographic K_mean value and in most of the patients, fitting was successful with the first or second CL trial. The overall satisfaction score was moderate to good and the disadvantages were low comfort compared to soft CL, difficulty with insertion and removal, short lens life, and high cost.