Blinking patterns in soft contact lens wearers can be altered with training

The blinking patterns of 15 soft contact lens wearers were recorded with a concealed video camera. Each of 20 consecutive blinks were graded, during slow motion replay of the video, as either complete, incomplete, forced, or twitch. Ten of these subjects were instructed to perform blinking exercises for a period of 2 weeks and the remaining 5 subjects acted as controls. After these exercises all the experimental group displayed an increased frequency of complete blinks, whereas the blinking patterns of the control group remained unchanged. Blinking exercises are likely to alleviate many of the signs and symptoms associated with incomplete blinking amongst contact lens wearers.