PURPOSE: For 14 years, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and eye care practitioners have strongly discouraged @entity1 from sleeping in contact lenses. In the past 9 months however, the FDA has approved three new hyper- @entity26 transmissible lenses for up to 30-night extended wear. Is this a great advance or another clinical triumph of hope over experience? What should the public know? What should @entity1 do? METHODS: Our research group has studied all three new lenses in prospective, randomized, masked, parallel clinical trials in a single center. As an outcome measure, we looked at whether lens wear caused more bacterial binding to surface corneal cells. RESULTS: Compared with conventional lens use, the new lenses caused no or only small increases in bacterial binding in either daily or extended wear. Furthermore, the increases seen stratified with known @entity281 risks by both lens type (hard or soft) and wearing schedule. Indeed, early epidemiologic reports indicate that this new generation of lenses may reduce lens-related microbial @entity281 risks by 10- to 40-fold. CONCLUSION: This represents a true clinical paradigm shift of the first magnitude in safety of contact lens wear. Taken together, this data suggest that @entity1 will soon replace their current, conventional lenses with this new generation of materials for any schedule of wear.

Effects of daily and overnight wear of hyper- XXXX transmissible rigid and silicone hydrogel lenses on bacterial binding to the corneal epithelium: 13-month clinical trials.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients'] @entity281 :: ('MESH:D007239', 'Disease') :: ['infection'] @entity26 :: ('MESH:D010100', 'Chemical') :: ['oxygen']
@entity26 :: (MESH:D010100,Chemical) :: ['oxygen']
