Nine common mistakes that contact lens wearers must avoid
Poor contact lens hygiene can cause infections that could lead to blindness - here are nine things to avoid
Fact: contact lens wearers are more prone to eye infections than non-lens wearers. According to the Centre for Health Protection, wearing contact lenses increases the risk of microbial keratitis, whereby the cornea gets infected, potentially leading to permanent visual impairment or blindness.
The centre estimates the incidence of microbial keratitis to range from 0.4 to 20 per 10,000 contact lens wearers per year. Those who wear the lenses overnight and for prolonged periods increase their risk of catching the disease from five to 10 times.
Using genetic tests to differentiate between thousands of bacteria, researchers at New York University's Langone Medical Centre suggest in a recent study that the root cause of the increased frequency of certain eye infections among lens wearers is the altered microorganism population in their eyes.
The researchers identified a diverse set of such microorganisms that more closely resembles the group of microorganisms of their eyelid skin than the bacterial grouping typically found in the eyes of non-wearers. This suggests that the organisms that cause eye infections in lens wearers emanate from the skin.
Greater attention should therefore be directed to eyelid and hand hygiene. Protect your vision by avoiding these nine common sins.