Contact lenses and astigamatism?

Question

I recently started wearing contact lenses (just got them yesterday), but it seems that they're not as clear as my glasses. They should be the right prescription. The lady at my optometrist place said that because I have astigmatism, the lenses wouldn't be quite as clear as my glasses because it depends on the shape of my eyeball and whether or not the lenses can perfectly fit over them, but I'm just wondering if there could be another possible answer to my problem? Did anyone else with astigmatism have this issue the first time they wore contacts?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hey!!

right basically because you have an astigmatism this means you have two parts to your prescription and the astigmatism part needs to be at a certain degrees for you to be able to see clearly, if its out then your vision will be blurry becaue its changing your prescription.

When you wear glasses the people in the lab will make them at the certain degrees (what your prescription is) then obviously with glasses once they are on your face they are at th right degrees because they can only sit on your face oe way so your vision is crystal clear.

With contact lenses its harder to do as obviously the lense moves around in your eye, with toric lenses they have a weight which drops to the bottom of the lens when its in your eye to try and keep it at the same angle most of the time so this means it will still move around but not as much as a contact lens without astigmatism. This will be one of the factors.

The other factor is that most toric lenses only come with degrees of either 90 or 180 where as your prescription could need the degrees of anything between 0-180 so they optician just has to ge the closest, so its alot harder to get a perfect fit with contact lenses than glasses.

Hope this helps

take care xx

Answer 2

Contacts for astigmatism are a very new thing, its still taking time for it to all work out. So dont worry that you cant see as clear as with your glasses.

I have contacts and glasses, and I also have astigmatism. I have had 5+ pairs of trials and Im still trying to find the right prescription. Obviously it gets frustrating and it takes patience, but if you want them enough, like I do, you'll wait.

Do you have soft or hard lenses? If you have soft, you might want to talk to your doctor about getting hard lenses. Right now I have soft, if I cant get the prescription right within the next try, we're going to try hard lenses.

Patience M'dear. Remember, contacts and astigmatism are new and everyones trying to get the science right.

Answer 3

That sounds like a weak explanation by your optometrist.

If you have astigmatism, and are having soft lenses (it's different for the less common RGP ones), astigmatism correcting lenses are available, but are more costly, slightly thicker, and sometimes need several trials to find the right lenses.

Because of this, if the degree of astigmatism is small, it is accepted practice to "drop" the astigmatic element of the  Rx and use the nearest spherical equivalent in the contacts.

With a cyl of 0.25 or 0.50 this is almost always the right thing to do, and most people will not notice any practical drop in vision.

With 0.75 to 1.00, there is more chance that a person will notice that their vision is being compromised, but it may still be a better compromise than astigmatic (toric) contacts for some.  This becomes a very individual decision and dependent on multiple factors.  

At 1.25 or over the astigmatism should  normally be corrected, but there will be occasional exceptions to that.

(for example, if the non-dominant eye is the only one with astigmatism, a person *might* be happier with a thinner sphere lens to match their dominant eye, than a  thicker lens providing better vision that they hardly notice.)

(edit: raawrbitch's experience is a good example: if the vision isn't good enough, rigid gas permeable lenses are one option, or trials with astigmatic toric lenses until the right one is located.  It can be the first lens.  Toric soft lenses have been around for more than 25 years, and they've improved a lot!)

edit 2:  Acuvue Advance for Astigmatism can be a good lens for the right people: you might not be within the available power range, and there is no substitute for a trial to see if the lenses stabilise correctly (that is, if the planned hozontal meridian actually sits horizontally).

Answer 4

I wear contact lenses and also have astigmatism.  My vision is not perfectly clear, but I was told that is because the strength of the contact lense is not strong enough to correct the blurring of my vision.  With my lenses my vision is close to having almost perfect.  But when I take them off,  its far from it and can barely see objects 2 feet in front of me.

Answer 5

Doggiez_world, basically astigmatism is a very common problem with vision and all it means is that that the shap of the eye is more "oblong," i.e. more like and "American Football" as opposed to the "normal" round structure.  The visual problems are now well-corrected with contact lenses but sometimes it's not that easy to find the correct specifications for the types of lenses one needs.

If it feels really awkward, call the Optometrist and discuss this with her/him and see if perhaps a different prescription for the contacts is in order.

Best of luck.