Guide for first-time users of contact lenses

What is Contact Lens?

- Dr. K. Bhujang Shetty

Contact lenses are thin, transparent, lightweight medical devices that are placed directly on the surface of the eye to correct visual defects from refractive errors. They are very similar in their function to those of spectacles. Contact lenses are curved and fit directly on the central, black part of your eye (the cornea) and are either hard or soft.

Contact lenses can be worn to correct vision, or for cosmetic or therapeutic reasons. People who choose to wear contact lenses for aesthetic and cosmetic reasons do so to avoid wearing glasses or to change the appearance of their eyes. Some people wear contact lenses for functional or optical reasons. For example, keratoconus and aniseikonia are some conditions that are corrected better with contact lenses than with glasses.

While contact lenses are used to correct the same conditions that eyeglasses correct, such as myopia (near-sightedness) and hyperopia (far-sightedness), they provide