When choosing between the different types of daily wear contact lenses, it can be difficult to see any noticeable differences if you don’t know what to look for. By definition, daily wear contacts are any contacts that are designed for you wear while your awake, but must be taken out at night. At night, they need to be stored in saline solution to disinfect and clean them. While they are all essentially the same, the big difference is in regards to how long they will last. Most daily wear contacts are replaced: daily, weekly, or monthly. Believe it or not, this small difference can actually have a big impact on how they affect you. Here is a closer look at some of factors that you should take into consideration.
The first factor that most people look at is cost. This is the easiest way to tell the contact lenses apart. All things being equal, the more you have to replace them, the more expensive they become over time. This means that over the course of a year, daily contacts will be the most expensive and monthly contacts will be the least expensive.
The second factor is safety. Overall, contact lenses that you replace on a daily basis are much safe than ones that are not replaced as often. The longer a contact is used, the higher the risk of getting some form of infection. Additionally, with a shorter lifespan, there is a lower chance for calcification to occur. Excessive calcification can occur if the contact lenses are not cleaned before and after you store them for the evening. However, if you are using weekly or monthly lenses there are products available that will help prevent calcification and can also help get rid of calcification once it happens. The main harm that calcification can cause is that it can create small scratches on your eye, however this is not considered to be a major concern as long as you follow the instructions that are provided to you on all of your products.
The final factor to consider is convenience. Obviously if you can simply throw your contacts away after wearing them for a day, there is no question about convenience However, this type of convenience is a trade-off with overall durability. Daily contact lenses are less durable, which means that accidentally ripping them is a concern that you should be aware off. Fortunately, because you wear a new pair everyday, if one pair rips, you should already have another pair ready to go. While daily, weekly, and monthly contact lenses are all convenient, a trade-off exists between ease of use and durability.
As you can see, there are a variety of factors that you need to take into consideration. The three primary factors to consider are cost, personal safety, and convenience All daily wear contact lenses have very similar qualities, which means that it is these smaller issues that should guide your final decision. For example, daily contact lenses are great because they are the safest and the best for your eye’s health, however they are a little less durable and more expensive.