What to Expect During a Contact Lens Fitting
A contact lens fitting is often added to your yearly eye exam after your eye health has been thoroughly evaluated.
During the contact lens fitting process, we measure your eye shape and gather extra information about lifestyle, contact lens preferences, and select the best lens for you. Then we evaluate the performance of these contact lenses on your eye (how they fit on your eye, checking your vision, and the comfort level).
If the stars are aligned, then we hand you your new contact lens prescription, which is valued for ONE year. Your fitting includes a pair of contact lenses for you to test/wear. You will need to then purchase a years supply of contact lenses with the prescription we give you. Although the prescription can be taken most anywhere, we believe that Costco gives you the best value (…on everything, really!).
Yes, this prescription is DIFFERENT than your eyeglass prescription. Call and ask us why!
Extended Wear Lenses
These thinner lenses that can be worn overnight and continuously anywhere from a week to a month depending on the brand.
Daily Wear/ Daily Disposable Lenses
Lenses that must be removed before sleeping (you can toss them – just make sure your hands are clean). The convenience is you don’t need to clean them or put them in a case, or store them, which saves you time and money on solution. Read More
Color Contact Lenses
Lenses that change the appearance of your eye color. Yes, we can fit you movie stars with the non-prescription, super cool contact lenses you need!
Soft Lenses
These lenses require more frequent replacement than their counterparts but are generally the most comfortable lens option and they stay in place more than hard lenses.
Hard Lenses
Extremely durable and easy to care for lenses that maintain their shape while allowing healthy oxygen flow to the eye. These lenses have many advantages such offering clearer vision than soft lenses and correction for most astigmatisms.
The necessary measurements for your lens fitting:
Eye Shape (Cornea) Measurements
The curvature of your contact lens is a huge part of a correctly fitted lens. We will use a combination of manual and computerized instruments to measure the shape of the front of your eyes (cornea). This will help your eye doctor determine the best contact lens for you.
Tear Film Evaluation
Your contact lens fitting also includes an evaluation of the front surface of your eye. It is important for your doctor to see that you have a healthy eye to put a contact lense on. The doctor is looking at your eye’s ability to produce tears, for dry spots, for diseases of the eye surface, and especially for blood vessels that have grown from the white part of your eye (sclera) into the clear front part of your eye (cornea) indicating that your current contact lense wear may be suffocating your eyes. Such blood vessel growths indicates that your eyes are not getting enough oxygen, aka suffocating. Dry eyes can make wearing contacts much more uncomfortable.
More about the benefits of daily wear contacts:
If your time is money, then opting for daily wear contacts is a win-win for sure! Although these are great for everyone, they are a MUST for people who wear contact lenses sporadically, because you don’t want bacteria growing in a contact lens case with contact lenses that have been sitting there for weeks (or months). It’s kind of gross once you think about it!