Contact Lens Options
Contact Lenses
At Gordon Optical, our expert team is experienced with helping patients of all ages getting fitted for contact lenses and fine tuning their prescription. We carry the most popular brands and offer our expertise to help you find the best fit for your situation.
- Contact Lens Fittings
- Lens Prescriptions
- Extended Wear Contact Lenses
- Disposable Daily Lenses
Frequently Asked Questions
About Contacts
Yes! With the newest lens designs and materials available today, we are able to fit patients who may not have had success wearing contact lenses in the past. Whether you were unable to previously use contacts due to poor vision, astigmatism, comfort issues, or dry eyes there are many more choices in lens materials and solutions to overcome those challenges today.
There are several types of Contact lenses but only a thorough examination of your eyes AND your lifestyle will reveal the answer. A few examples of Contact lenses are:
Daily Disposables
The shortest replacement schedule is single use (daily disposable) lenses, which are disposed of each night. These may be best for patients with ocular allergies or other conditions because it limits deposits of antigens and protein. Single-use lenses are also useful for people who use contacts infrequently, or for purposes (e.g. swimming or other sporting activities) where losing a lens is likely.
Two-week Replacement Disposables
The main advantage of wearing disposable lenses is that you put a fresh pair of lenses in your eyes every two weeks. Another advantage is ease of care with multipurpose solutions.
One-month Replacement Disposables
Similar to two-week replacement lenses but you throw them out every 30 days.
Conventional Contact Lenses
These are the original soft lenses. It is recommended these lenses be replaced on a yearly basis. Conventional lenses are more care intensive than disposable lenses.
Color Contact Lenses
Certain soft contact lenses come in colors to either enhance your eye color or completely change it.
Toric for Astigmatism
Toric lenses are made from the same materials as regular contact lenses but have a few extra characteristics:
• They correct for both spherical and cylindrical aberration.
• They may have a specific ‘top’ and ‘bottom’, as they are not symmetrical around their center and must not be rotated. Lenses must be designed to maintain their orientation regardless of eye movement. Often lenses are thicker at the bottom and this thicker zone is pushed down by the upper eyelid during blinking to allow the lens to rotate into the correct position (with this thicker zone at the 6 o’clock position on the eye). Toric lenses are usually marked with tiny striations to assist their fitting.
• They are usually more expensive to produce than non-toric lenses
Bifocal Contact Lenses
Multifocal soft contact lenses are more complex to manufacture and require more skill to fit. All soft bifocal contact lenses are considered “simultaneous vision” because both far and near vision corrections are presented simultaneously to the retina, regardless of the position of the eye. Of course, only one correction is correct, the incorrect correction causes blur. Commonly these are designed with distance correction in the center of the lens and near correction in the periphery, or vice versa.
Yes, but actually no. While some contacts are advertised as wearable in the water there are two main reasons why you should not swim or shower with your contact lenses – possible loss of the lenses and, most importantly, contamination of the lenses.
Underwater, lenses may be washed out of your eye, or above water, a small wave or splash may take the lens with it. Contact lenses, especially the soft variety, will absorb any chemicals or germs in the water. They will then stay in or on the lens for several hours, irritating the eyes and possibly causing infection.
While extended-wear lenses can be worn overnight, extended lens wearers may have an increased risk for corneal infections and corneal ulcers, primarily due to poor care and cleaning of the lenses, tear film instability, and bacterial stagnation. Corneal neovascularization has historically been a common complication of extended lens wear, though this does not appear to be a problem with silicone hydrogel extended wear.
The most common complication of extended lens use is conjunctivitis, usually allergic or giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC), sometimes associated with a poorly fitting contact lens.
Visit Us Today!
Our professional staff are always eager to work with new and returning customers to help guide them through the process of finding the perfect pair of eyeglasses, sunglasses, or even sport/activewear glasses!