This is an article that I found talking about how contact lenses may soon be able to dispense drugs into the human eye.
So, I was reading this article and thought, what a great idea! I myself, wear contacts, and suffer from dry eyes. When they get really bad, I have to stop wearing my contacts and use eye drops for a while. It would be great if I could wear my contacts, and get the treatment I need to get better at the same time. I hate wearing my glasses out to places, and that just makes the process worse. Being able to wear my contacts even when I have dry eyes would be like a dream come true.
Studies show that more than 59% of glaucoma patients advised to use eye drops don't even when untreated glaucoma can lead to blindness. The times that they do use their eye drops, only 1 to 7 percent of the drop actually gets into the eye, while the rest of it just drips down their cheek or into their eye lashes. This means, that if you actually got all the medicine that you were supposed to get, you would get better 93% faster. If dry eye and glaucoma sufferers could wear contacts to get their treatment, all the medication that they were throwing away because it was running down their cheek would now be helping them. It would be coming right out of the contact lens and going directly into the eye. This would save money and time because you aren't wasting your drops and since you aren't wasting your drops, you don't have to spend as much time driving to the store to refill the prescription.
Drug dispensing contact lenses can be helpful in many ways. They save us from having to use messy eye drops and allow us to continue on normal life without worrying about glasses, or vision that is just not as good.
This experiment has been tried a few times before but has never been a full success. The contacts would either dispense a lot of the drug for a very short period or time, or an amount of the drug that is almost useless in a long period of time. Now, scientists have figured out how to produce the exact amount of the drug at a constant rate and make it last for 30 days or more. This is almost the perfect amount of time because most contact lenses, with the exception of some Acuvue lenses, are 30 day lenses.
As of right now, the testing of the lenses is only as far as a lab dish but animal testing is expected to be happening in just a few months. Scientists hope to be testing on humans in a year or so, but want to have it just right before that happens. They just have to make the lenses in a quality high enough to be used in the human eye.
If you suffer from dry eyes or glaucoma this could be the solution to all of your worries and could make the rest of your life much more fun. No more worrying about where your glasses are, or that you can't see your son or grandson at his first baseball game. All of that will be crystal clear, once again.
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