Soft Contact Lenses

When determining which type of soft contact lenses you need for your eyes, you should first have a thorough eye test done by your physician. Your physician can help you determine which types of soft contact lenses are right for you, which ones fit best, and which ones work best for your lifestyle.

Bifocal soft contact lenses are one type of lenses that are very popular today. Because people who wear contact lenses also often need reading glasses, manufacturers have come up with bifocal contact lenses. One type of bifocal contact lens looks like a small version of the lens you might find in a pair of standard eyeglasses. The normal vision part is on the top and the reading vision part is on the bottom. Even though the bottoms of the contact lenses are weighted to keep them in the right place, they rarely stay there. Every time the person blinks, the lenses shift—and they sometimes can be difficult to shift back into their proper positions.

Toric Soft Contact Lens

Another type of bifocal soft contact lens has the bifocal part all around the rim of the contact. This leaves the center part of the contact for normal viewing, so to see normally you have to look straight ahead. You get the bifocal effect by looking upward, downward, or to one side or the other. If you want to see something normally that’s off to one side, however, you need to turn your head to face it so you can look at it straight on.

Another option for those who wear bifocals is to get contact lenses that are different for each eye. Soft contact lenses have been developed so you can have one lens that gives one eye normal distance vision, and other lens gives the other eye the strength it needs to read or do close work. The dominant eye is usually the one corrected for distance, and the other eye is used for reading.

Ciba Soft Contact Lens

Another type of soft contact lenses on the market are Bandage lenses. These are contact lenses that are used as bandages to help heal an injured cornea. These lenses protect the cornea from the eyelid’s blinking and from dust and other debris that might be blown into the eye. Bandage lenses are typically clear and they have no correcting power. They help an eye heal and are not meant to improve vision.