The effect of environmental stress on contact lens wear

Contact lens wearers frequently report symptoms of discomfort and dryness, this being among the major causes of drop out.

We are using an environmental chamber to assess how being exposed to different everyday environments affects the ocular surface, and the subjective symptoms when people are wearing different types of contact lenses.

For example, we are exploring the effect of low and high humidity on the ocular comfort of the contact lenses wearers, using common clinical tests like FBUT or assessing ocular hyperaemia, as well new methods including blinking rate and ocular surface temperature.

In addition, we are evaluating how different environmental conditions effect the optical quality of contact lens wearers using the OQAS, a device that allows measuring the scatter of the eye, which is affected by the tear stability.

Professor Shahina Pardhan
Dr Juan Tabernero
Dr Nery Garcia-Porta