If you are interested in moving from eyeglasses to contact lenses or you currently wear contact lenses, the staff at Bachman Family Eye Care will be pleased to help you navigate your options! Our recommendations are individually tailored to each patient and are based on many factors including your glasses prescription, visual needs, overall health and eye health. Just as each person is unique, each contact lens fit is unique. We will commit to work with you to find the right product for you until we have exhausted all options.
What is a contact lens evaluation?
A contact lens evaluation is a separate part of a comprehensive eye examination and requires additional testing. Patients wearing contact lenses require more of the doctor’s time and expertise.
In order to legally prescribe contact lenses, a doctor must:
- Review the health of the component parts of the eye; the conjunctiva, cornea and eyelids
- Determine how contact lens wear will affect the health of the eye
- Determine the appropriate contact lens fit, based on the patient’s current prescription, vision needs, corneal curvature and overall health of the eye
- Evaluate the fit of the selected contact lens on the eye, ensuring proper alignment with the shape of the patient’s cornea and eyelids
- Measure the patient’s corrected vision with the contact lenses on the eye, verify the patient is comfortable with the fit
Contact lens fittings can vary in difficulty, depending on several factors, including the types of contact lenses needed, the visual needs of the patient, and the overall health of the patient’s eyes.
What is a contact lens prescription?
Contact lenses are medical devices that can only be dispensed by a prescription from a qualified physician. Contact lenses need to be handled with the same caution you use for prescription drugs; this includes discarding a product which has expired, staying compliant with a product’s wear duration and maintaining regular follow-up visits as required by your doctor. Your contact lens prescription will include the power of your contact lenses, the type of contact lenses you wear, the curvature of the contact lenses, as well as other information determined by the doctor to be required for the best fit.
Contact lens prescriptions expire after one year (or sooner if the doctor has a medical reason for a requiring a shorter expiration date). Since contact lenses are prescribed just like medicine, laws and regulations surrounding contact lens prescriptions are governed by the FDA.
Experience
Our staff are here to help fit patients who are new contact lens wearers. We specialize in hard-to-fit patients, disposable lenses, daily-wear lenses, toric lenses for astigmatism, multi-focal lenses for patients needing a bifocal, extended-wear lenses, gas-permeable lenses, and post-surgical lenses.
We cannot spend enough time expressing the importance of making sure the contact lens fit is right for each patient. As your health care professional, we are here to work with you to explore all options until we find a product that is functional AND comfortable for the patient.