Letter: Hydrogel or silicone hydrogel?

Marcella McParland, Coopervision’s director of professional services, kindly responded to my letter of January 18, 2019 in her letter of February 15, 2019 and I feel a follow-up is warranted.

It is clearly encouraging that we both appear to accept that there is widespread acceptance that the daily-disposable modality represents the healthiest form of contact lens wear. However, opinions diverge on the question of whether hydrogel or silicone hydrogel materials provide patients with the overall ‘better’ option?

Researching this question is the source of dozens of quite lengthy and detailed papers. None of the three papers selected by McParland demonstrate overall superiority of SiH materials to Hy materials, even in the matter of reducing hypoxia-induced corneal swelling during open eye wear.