Understanding real-time diurnal contact lens comfort

Worldwide contact lens (CL) market growth has been essentially stagnant over the past several years because the number of new CL wearers is roughly equal to the number of patients who have dropped out of CLs.^1,2 While CL dropout can be attributed to factors such as poor vision, high cost or inconvenience,³ CL discomfort is easily the top reason why established soft CL wearers drop out.¹

CL comfort has historically been evaluated in the test room via self-report or in clinical studies with take-home diaries, though each of these approaches potentially suffer from intentional or unintentional patient reporting biases. Nevertheless, modern technologies have allowed investigators over the past decade or so to capture real-time comfort data with smartphone technologies to help avoid this issue.^4-7