Toric soft contact lenses - where are we now?

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Two recent studies focused on the status of soft toric contact lenses. Sheila Hickson-Curran and Louis Dias explain

SOFT TORIC CONTACT lenses have become an increasingly viable and popular fitting option thanks to improvements in lens designs and manufacturing as well as the introduction of frequent replacement and planned replacement lenses.

But despite this modality's improving status, contact lens practitioners still widely view soft torics as complex, time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, the proportion of soft toric lenses fitted fails to reflect the incidence of astigmatism among contact lens wearers.

To make the fitting process simpler, faster and more cost-effective, it's important to understand current habits and practices in soft toric fitting.

And to understand what astigmatic patients really want from their contact lens correction, we need to evaluate patient satisfaction with currently available lenses. We conducted two studies to investigate the current status of soft toric lenses and to try to determine the reasons why these lenses have yet to meet their full potential. This article will review the results of those studies.

STUDY 1
Fitting habits and practices
We conducted online interviews with 153 eye care professionals (qualified optometrists and ophthalmologists who prescribe soft toric lenses) across the US to gain a better understanding of their practices, expectations and requirements with respect to fitting soft toric lenses.
Our survey found that contact lens practitioners most commonly prescribe soft toric lenses at 1.00DC of astigmatism and above (Figure 1). Eye care practitioners use spherical lenses mostly for cylinder powers of 0.25DC and 0.50DC. They don't widely use GP lenses, with only one in four eye care practitioners prescribing this modality.

Fitting considerations
Many studies have found that practitioner recommendation is a key factor in the uptake of contact lenses. In this study we found that only half of eye care practitioners proactively recommend soft toric lenses to their astigmatic patients for previously uncorrected astigmatism even though the majority do present soft torics as an option.