Clinical performance of a new silicone hydrogel cosmetic lens
A new cosmetic sihy contact lens has been recently released by Alcon (Air Optix Colors), which is manufactured with lotrafilcon B and has an oxygen permeability (Dk) of 110.
Cosmetic lenses in Europe and the U.S. typically account for <10 percent of all new fits today, but they are more commonly used in Asian countries such as China (15 percent), Indonesia (31 percent), South Korea (41 percent), or Taiwan (63 percent).1,2
Despite this growing market, lenses with cosmetic tints are primarily available in pHEMA (poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate))-based materials, which have a relatively low oxygen permeability compared with modern silicone hydrogel (sihy) materials.2
A new cosmetic sihy contact lens has been recently released by Alcon (Air Optix Colors), which is manufactured with lotrafilcon B and has an oxygen permeability (Dk) of 110. The application of the color print is distinctive.
While the color print on hydrogel lenses is often applied to the anterior surface of the lens, Air Optix Colors incorporates a printing technique in which ink layers are encapsulated within the material, near the back surface of the lens, which are then covered with an additional clear coat before plasma treatment.
Related:
Air Optix Colors vs. FreshLook
Patient satisfaction and clinical performance with the new cosmetic sihy lens was assessed in a clinical study comparing it to a long-standing, successful conventional color hydrogel lens, FreshLook ColorBlends, also manufactured by Alcon.
Ethics approval was obtained through a Research Ethics Committee at the University of Waterloo prior to the start of the study, and the study was conducted following the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. RMANOVA and Tukey Post-hoc comparisons were used for the analysis (p<0.05 was considered significant).
In this study, habitual soft lens wearers initially wore the company’s lotrafilcon B sihy non-color lens (Air Optix Aqua; Alcon) bilaterally for one week to adapt to the lens material and design. This adaptation phase was followed by four weeks of daily lens wear of Air Optix Colors and FreshLook, in which each lens was worn in one eye only, in a randomized contralateral eye design.
Both lens types had the same color pattern (color Grey) and the Air Optix Colors contact lens was replaced after four weeks and the FreshLook contact lens after was replaced two weeks (Figure 1). During each study visit, visual acuity, subjective ratings, and biomicroscopy data were collected. After 1, 13, and 27 days of lens wear, study participants completed a variety of subjective ratings at home.