In the last year or so, the biggest news in soft contact lens technology has been the addition of the new category of silicone hydrogels.  Silicone has been used in gas permeable lenses for the last couple of decades but only until recently it was impossible to add silicone  to the hydrogel materials.  The benefits of silicone to contact lenses lie in the ability of silicone to transmit oxygen.  This is great news for soft lenses which up until now have trailed gas permeable lenses in this area by a significant amount.  Additionally, some of the other benefits of silicone being added into the soft lens materials is that these lenses tend to dry less than traditional soft lenses and also build up less protein.   Currently, there are four brands of soft lenses utilizing this silicone technology.  Ciba's Night & Day, Ciba's O2 Optix, Bausch & Lomb's PureVision and Vistakon's Acuvue Advance.  There will be more brands incorporating this technology in the near future.  These types of products represent yet another way to address some of the contact lens failures of the past.

Just published in April 2005 was a longitudinal study conducted in England and Switzerland observing the phenomenon of children who wear glasses drawing increased negative attention from their peers.  The study, after adjusting for many factors including social class and maternal educational level, showed that children who wear glasses were 35 to 37 percent more likely to be victims of physical or verbal bullying.  You would think that in our modern enlightened age, as well as how fashionable glasses have become, this phenomenon would have passed into oblivion, but this sadly is not the case.  Please share this information with any parents of children wearing glasses so they may be more aware of this potential problem.

Viagra has been implicated in causing significant vision problems.  Athough the population examined for this study was very small, the effect on vision was noted within 36 hours of taking the drug and the final acuity ranged from 20/20 (normal vision) to light perception (only able to tell that a light was either on or off).  All of these patients had other pre-existing conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.  Although the study concluded that the risk of these types of devastating vision problems is likely small, patients with heart disease risk factors need further examination prior to being prescribed Viagra and the other similar drugs within this class.

The data collected from a study of Keratoconus patients was recently released.  This particular study examined the tears of Keratoconus patients.  What was found was that there were significantly higher amounts of inflammatory molecules in the tears of Keratoconus patients compared to the tears of eyes in the normal population.  Although historically Keratoconus has been considered a non-inflammatory condition resulting in corneal thinning, these findings may indicate that inflammation and chronic inflammatory events may be at the heart of this visually impairing disease.  Results such as these can totally shift our thinking as to how to manage this lifelong condition.