Long-term contact lens use safe in kids

Wearing contact lenses every day for 6 years does not seem to be harmful to children, leading to no serious side effects and ocular changes, according to a recent study.

“Overall, the children in this clinical trial were successful contact lens wearers. They achieved relatively long wearing hours, exhibited low grades of and clinically insignificant biomicroscopy findings, and there were no lens-related serious adverse events,” the researchers said.

The study included 144 children (aged 8–12 years; 75 boys) who had never used contact lenses before. At baseline, participants were randomly assigned to wear MiSight 1 day or Proclear 1 day lenses; after 3 years, groups were crossed over. Lenses were worn for at least 10 hours per day, 6 days per week. Ocular adverse events and changes to the ocular physiology were set as outcomes.

Over 6 years of follow-up, 40 ocular adverse events were reported in 30 participants; 12 were binocular. The most common side effect was corneal events that required temporary lens discontinuation, such as corneal staining, mild pannus, and superficial punctate keratitis. [Cont Lens Anterior Eye 2021;doi: 10.1016/j.clae.2020.11.011]

Ninety-three percent of the detected adverse events were classified as nonsignificant. Only one case of a serious adverse event, defined as conditions that were vision-threatening or could potentially permanently damage a body function, was reported: uveitis associated with herpes zoster infection occurring at year 5.

Two patients developed incident peripheral scars detected at years 4 and 6, respectively, which were categorized as significant adverse events. Investigators discontinued contact lens use for two participants over the 6-year observation period.

They also said that 45 percent of the observed ocular events were not related to the contact lenses. There were no episodes of corneal infections. There were only four cases of corneal infiltrative events, yielding a crude incidence rate of 6.1 per 1,000 wearing years.

Biomicroscopy further underscored the safety of using contact lenses. Ninety-nine percent of evaluations were grade 0–1, suggesting none or trace levels of corneal damage. Five incidents over 6 years were graded higher than 2 (mild): one episode each of tarsal roughness, tarsal hyperaemia, and limbal hyperaemia, and two cases of bulbar hyperaemia.  

“These results suggest that children as young as 8 years of age can successfully wear daily disposable, hydrogel contact lenses for multiple consecutive years, making these lenses a viable and safe method for delivering optical management of myopia progression control,” the researchers said.

“The safety and ocular health results of this study can be considered relevant to future cohorts of children fit with hydrogel, daily disposable contact lenses for myopia control, because the lenses were worn full-time, just as they will be worn for any future myopia control contact lens design,” they added.