Regular and contact lens eye drops

Regular and contact lens eye drops


What is the difference?


is there a difference besides price?


can i use just regular eye drops instead of contact lens eye drops?




I know i am not suppose to use tap water because of bacteria that might get
in the contact lens.

 

Contact lens eye drops don't contain preservatives or other active
ingredients that could linger in the lens and irritate your eye for
longer, and they don't coat or smear the surface of the lens itself.

You can certainly use regular eyedrops when you're not wearing contacts.

But as a General Rule, contact lens eye drops tend to be kinder to your
eyes whether you're wearing contacts or not.

Dom

 

There's a bit more to it.

First, there are indeed a couple of instances where a "contact lens
drop" is identical to that which is marketed as a "tear replacement"
drop.

Both "contact lens drops" and "moisture drops/ tear replacement drops"
are available with and without preservatives. Today, the vast majority
of drops have been reformulated using "kinder" preservatives.

Both types of drops can often be used for both purposes.

Drops that might be best for RGP lenses are not necessarily the best for
HEMMA Soft lenses which are not necessarily the best for Silicone Soft
lenses.

Some tear replacement drops are designed to be extra viscous and would
be a poor choice for contact lens drops. Conversely, some "moisture
drops" are not viscous enough for RGP lenses but are fine for some soft
lenses. And some "moisture drops", like the "get the red out" types are
definitely NOT for use with contact lenses.

So how does one figure out what's best? Ask your
practitioner---sometimes s/he has tried a number of kinds and has an
idea what's best for what lens under which conditions. You could play
it safe and use a soft lens drop for soft lenses and try a few to see
what works best for you. Same for RGP lenses. That's probably the best
thing to do.

LB, O.D.

 

This may be of interest, but not for contact lens wearers.

Salt is the main ingredient in "artificial tears". After that, some minor
ingredients to control pH and preserve, and sometimes to lubricate.
The rest, of course, is water.

Salt, bought in this way, costs usually over $2000 per pound.

If you are sure that stuff put in your eyes needs to be sterile, buffered,
and professionally slimed, you should never go swimming with your
eyes open, especially under water. You need to watch out for rain
drops, too, and spray from waterfalls and surf.

On the other hand, if you are a wild and crazy penny pincher like me,
you might consider making your own saline eyewash with distilled,
or even tap-, water. The standard formula for isotonic saline is 0.85%
salt, but eyedrops sometimes have 0.6%. That makes it easy to figure
out for liters but you might need some help from your local high-school
student for gallons.

If you don't trust yourself to make isotonic saline, you can buy it at
the drug store. That kind is sterile to start, and pricey like everything
in the drug store. I think it is buffered as well.

Well, there is no slime in this, but you know, a little bit of slime gets
blinked away in minutes, if not seconds. I have one kind of drug store
drops that slimes so much that you can't see for a minute or two, but
that can get blinked away in 3 to 5 minutes.

Anyway, the main thing to be pointed out here is that they eyes can be
irrigated not with a bottle stem or medicine dropper, which is a dangerous
practice, but with an atomizer bottle of the kind which expensive nose
drops come in. Then you don't need to lean back or lie down, which
may be tough to do in public places. Get some in the eyes and leave
the rest to moisten the local skin, drying slowly to keep up the local
humidity. If you've got dry nose as well as dry eyes, you can do a job
on the nostrils was well as the eyes, once you've got the atomizer out.
It is really a great thing if you must sit at a CRT in a dry atmosphere for
hours at a time, because those thing suck all the moisture out of your
eyes.

But remember, I am not a MD or OD., and you are advised not to take
any advice from me. I advise you not to put anything at all in your eyes,
particularly contact lenses, the use of which can have some dire
consequences. I have never used contact lenses, but I have been doing
the saline-misting trick for a while and I can tell you that, case of me, it
beats dry eye and is much easier to do than drops, not to mention being
cheaper by far than the drug-store kind of drops.

 

Let's see- you're not a health professional, you know squat about
contact
lenses, you state not to take any advice from you so why are you even
posting this??
There are significant differences between saline and artificial tears.
BTW, using non-sterile tap water on a routine basis is a very bad
idea:

Quote:
Dr. Dwight Cavanagh, vice chairman of ophthalmology at UT Southwestern
Medical Center at Dallas, says the organism, Acanthamoeba, is resistant
to chlorine used to sterilize tap water.

"People who wear their contact lenses while taking a shower, use tap
water to remove debris from their lenses or go swimming in lakes have
an increased chance of becoming infected with this organism," Cavanagh
says. "The amoeba can bind to the contact lens and cause irreparable
damage to the cornea."

With fewer than 150 cases reported every year, Acanthamoeba kerititis
is rare, but the eye infection can worsen without proper treatment and
can result in blindness or necessitate a corneal transplant. Warning
signs of infection are redness, vision loss and exquisite eye pain. If
you experience these symptoms, consult an ophthalmologist immediately."
end quote.

Why is it that every Tom, "Dick" ,and Harry believe that they are
experts in eye care but is not found in other health fields??

frank

 

Troll?
Wants to be recognized as a gladiator against
the machine that is ripping everyone off for what he
thinks is table salt and water? And he has anecdotal
evidence since he hasn't done any damage to himself
(yet).

Oh, you're so wrong. Spend some time on any (all?) of
the other health groups. There are a handful in every
group. And the proportion is skewed since these types
are *way* more vocal (for a number of reasons).

-Quick

 

Fine, as long as you don't keep it more than a day or two. I can go
bad, really bad, and fairly quickly, even if you are clean about it. If
you boil it at or near sea level for 15 minutes, I'd give it a week
before dumping it out.

w.stacy, o.d.

 

I have been on this group for quite awhile but stopped when Otis
destroyed the group. I come around every so often to see if
Otis and his ilk has left yet, no luck still.

So what happens if someone does follow his advice and
uses non-sterile tap water and develops an infection??

And I HAVE been on other medical and
health related groups- none as bad as this one. Don't
see any wannabe dentists second guessing dentistry.

frank

 

Used distilled, then. What's to go bad? Maybe the salt? Things that
make water go bad need food. Still worried -- get "saline for irrigation".

Do you know about the water and salt deep underground which has
been there for millions of years? Has it gone bad yet?

Oh, I see, you said "I", not "it". Forgive me.

Be sure to tell your patients to wear their goggles in the
shower bath, Dr. Frank.

I would be pleased to explain how to make your own fluoride
mouth rinse. It keeps well. But then again, it has got fluoride in it.
Rat poision!

--------------------------

There is a enduring symbiosis between medical practitioners and
druggists, which is why to learn to toss out all your pills in time to buy
some new and fresher ones. True some stuff does not last, but dry
pills and saline are rather time worthy. About a million little jewels
of realization, like this, could substantially reduce the burgeoning cost
of medical care.

 

OK do I have to give you a mini-course in microbiology????

Unless you have COMPLETELY STERILE TECHNIQUE, and have completely
sterile water, and completely sterile salt, and a completely sterile
atmosphere above your saline, you are going to have

1. some microbes in there

2. some food for them

3. the ideal temperature and medium for 1. above to grow in.

4. after a while, a pathogen loaded soup capable of doing in a human
cornea in a matter of hours. Saline is the perfect medium for some of
these pathogens to grow.

Now YOUR technique and supplies might be better than I think they are...

but I doubt it...

and I certainly wouldn't let you put a drop of THAT S**T in my eye!

w.stacy, o.d.

 

"William Stacy" <> in message

said this about home-made eyewash solution:

Don't worry. But don't forget your goggles when you shower.

 

I never said you couldn't get tap water in your eye. Not a problem,
unless you are in some backwoods, swamp water town...

Tap water in the U.S. is fine to go in the eye. Home made saline is not
(unless you adhere to strict microbiological technique). Why don't you
respond to THAT part of my post, Mr. Science????

w.stacy, o.d.

 

If one were worried about one's ability to make clean enough saline for
eyewash, one could instead buy "saline for irrigation" at the drug store.
I think I mentioned that.

What I do is make it a gallon at a time with tap water, and keep that
capped in a dark closet. After several months anything which might have
lived has died and settled to the bottom. If I didn't believe that, I could
use distilled water from Walgreens. Table salt is sufficiently sterile, and
since you are qualified to teach me microbiology, you will know why.
Also, I could boil the saline and pour it into a gallon jug which had been
baked at 400 degrees F., covered with aluminum foil. I could start
with tap water which had passed through an activated-carbon filter,
and a 0.22 micron Millipore filter. But why -- that old gallon in my
closet has not given me any trouble for at least two years. I made it
initially for nose douching, since I suffer dry nose during the heating
season. But it works fine for misting the eyes.

Since you are microbiologically capable, I propose to send you a vial of
the stuff in the closeted gallon, for you to plate onto agar culture media.
That should have some "beef" other than sodium chloride, which is
not known to be a microbiological nutrient.

You are a fun guy, Dr. Stacy. You're just trying to get me goin',
arn'cha?

 

Oooh, even better. Mold and fungi especially like the dark!

After several months anything which might have

Er, back to microbiology 1A Mr. Science. The mold and fungi will be
well established throughout your soup.

If I didn't believe that, I could

Right, trust walgreens to provide STERILE distilled water. Not!

Table salt is sufficiently sterile, and

Not sterile, for sure, but close enough.

Oops. Here's where your "sterile technique" fails. As it cools, IT
SUCKS AMBIENT AIR INTO THE JUG. Can you guess what that ambient air has
in it?


I could start

Folks, don't try this at home. Dicky, do you own a microscope? I'd
suggest putting a slide of that concoction under it...

I made it

Don't tempt me, you olfactory cad, you...

Call homeland security, someone!...

Thanks, but no sir. Just don't want people mixing up their own saline,
storing it for a while, then innoculating their eyes with the product...

 

Well then, we could use tap water for misting our eyeballs. It should
have the advantage of stimulating tearing due to being mildly irritating.

Of course we are not inoculating anything, we are just wetting the
surface. You seem to be given to the practice of exaggeration.

 

No problem there.

Look up the definition. You will find that introducing a germ onto a
substrate is an acceptible definition, esp. in microbiology, which is
where this thread went. The eye is an ideal substrate (warm, wet,
mucoid, etc. etc). But thanks for spelling it right, anyway.

w.stacy, o.d.

 

The definition implies "into" as opposed to "onto". Like, in medicine,
subcutaneous, intravenous, intraperitoneal ...

T'were it so, we'd all be blind from birth or earlier. Our eyes enjoy
the benefits of our immune systems.

All kinds of shit flies into them. Well, onto them. A little bath in
tap water or salt water every now and then is good for them.

Especially after they have been messed around with by surgeons.

--
Dicky




..

 

Oops! -- it looks like we still disagree on how to spell *inoculate*.

Well, maybe sometime soon there will be a Whole Food Drug Store
chain, with all natural and no preservatives.

I know something about why "health-care companies" do things in the
ways that they do. Capital appreciation, dividends, and executive
compensation have a lot to do with it. Disposables and obsolescence
are big items in their games.