Contact Lens Spectrum

Zeiss Medical Technology announced the 510k clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Zeiss Clinic 360, an all-in-one cloud and browser-based software solution. According to a company press release, Zeiss Clinic 360 combines diagnostic and medical data into a comprehensive patient view that allows clinicians to evaluate disease progression, support treatment decisions, and improve workflow efficiency.

THE FIRST GENERATION of myopia control spectacle lenses employed lenslets to achieve simultaneous vision correction and myopic defocus, delivering a gaze-independent optical treatment—the kind that was only previously possible with contact lenses and orthokeratology (Lam et al, 2020; Bao et al, 2022). Now, the engineers behind these lenses have turned up the dial. Could contact lenses be next?

WHEN THINKING about the future of presbyopia management, consider pupil size, because it plays an important role in multifocal contact lens success. Currently, providers are generally focused on the patient’s refractive error and add power. Many soft multifocal lens options utilize various center-near aspheric designs.

AS WE CONTINUE THIS YEAR'S celebration of Contact Lens Spectrum’s 40th anniversary, this month we are reminded of the “Event of the Year,” which we have published since the late 1990s. To commemorate those events, we asked for your feedback on which were the most remarkable over the decades. It was clear that myopia came out on top. From the first US Food and Drug Administration approval of a contact lens to orthokeratology to spectacles, readers are absolutely excited about all things myopia.

A COLLEAGUE ASKED ME ABOUT a keratoconus patient who was fitted for scleral lenses and complained of poor visual acuity. My colleague fit the lenses and measured a toric over-refraction. Therefore, he ordered a scleral lens with a toric front surface. But, with the new delivery came a new visual failure. To his surprise, he found the same residual astigmatism he had measured before. How is this possible?

FOR SOMEONE WHO constantly cares for keratoconic, transplanted, and otherwise diseased corneas in the medically necessary contact lens environment, people are often surprised to hear my claim that the hardest thing I do in clinical practice is multifocal contact lens prescribing for the presbyopic patient. The project seems beguilingly simple—give the presbyopic patient a lens with multifocal optics so that they can see clearly at all distances. What could go wrong with that? In a word: everything.

FROM THE PROMISE of tailored drug delivery to augmented reality and continuous health monitoring, there have been numerous avenues of research investigating the high-tech contact lenses of the future. Indeed, for the past several years, Contact Lens Spectrum has regularly published columns on contact lenses of the future and what they may entail.

Figure 1. The image shows Munson’s sign, reflecting an advanced stage of keratoconus in this case, wearing an intralimbal GP lens in his left eye. At her first examination in 1997, the patient presented with toxoplasmosis, amblyopia, and central corneal scarring in her right eye. She was fit with a specialized bicurve rigid gas permeable lens designed specifically for managing keratoconus OS. In 2011, she was refit with large intralimbal GPs in both eyes.

THYROID EYE DISEASE (TED) is usually diagnosed when a few classic signs and symptoms arise. These may include eyelid retraction, proptosis/exophthalmos, extraocular muscle restrictions, and diplopia (Gupta et al, 2009). Unfortunately, these issues generally occur in the later stages of TED, leaving this problem often undiagnosed for far too long. It may be possible to identify TED much earlier by considering it when examining the dry eye patient.

HIGHER-ORDER ABERRATIONS (HOAs) have been known to affect optical systems since Kepler and Galileo developed their telescopes in the early 1600s.1 Over the next few centuries, the understanding of how light courses through optical systems was continuously refined; however, aberration detection and quantification were not available. In the early 1900s, Hartmann developed a plate that was used to help eliminate aberrations from telescopes.