Purpose: To examine the clinical performance of two brands of silicone‐hydrogel lenses when worn on a daily wear basis. Methods: Fifty‐six subjects with no ocular disease were enrolled at multiple sites in Australasia. Contact lenses made from galyfilcon A or lotrafilcon A were randomly assigned to each eye of the subject and the lenses were worn on a daily wear basis for a period of two weeks. Subjects did not know the identity of the lenses they wore. Clinical data and patient responses to a questionnaire were gathered at an initial visit and after two weeks of wear. Results: For both lenses, the degree of limbal hyperaemia and bulbar conjunctival hyperaemia decreased significantly over the two‐week wearing period. The eyes wearing galyfilcon A lenses showed an increase in conjunctival staining compared to the baseline measures. On average, galyfilcon A lenses decentred more and moved less than the lotrafilcon A lenses. The lotrafilcon A lenses showed a greater loss of wettability, as judged by practitioner grading, than the galyfilcon A lenses over the two‐week period. The subjective responses showed strong preference for the galyfilcon A lens across 26 of 27 questions relating to comfort, vision, handling, preference and other subjective outcomes. Discussion: The results show that different silicone‐hydrogel lenses have different performance characteristics on the eye, when worn on a daily wear basis. Striving for high oxygen transmissibility at the expense of other properties may lead to a range of undesirable performance characteristics.

Background: Daily disposable contact lenses are considered to be the pinnacle of safe contact lens wear, yet it has been suggested that it takes some period of wear for the lens surface to reach optimal compatibility with the ocular surface. This study assesses the influence of brief treatment with a conditioning drop on the ocular response to new contact lenses over a single day of wear. Methods: The study was a single-masked, paired (contralateral) comparison of the signs

The similarity of bleb responses induced by the silicone-hydrogel lenses under the tested wearing conditions is consistent with the proposition that increases in Dk/t above a certain level will produce minimal change in corneal physiologic conditions compared with that when no lens is worn.

No abstract