Contact Lenses Perth

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– Welcome everyone, I’m here with Damon Ezekiel, owner and principal optometrist of Ezekiel Eyes. Damon, thanks for joining us today.

– Thanks Leigh, thanks for the time.

– Great, could you tell me a bit about contact lenses? What are some of the benefits of wearing contact lenses?

– So, Leigh, there’s a lot of different types of contact lenses. We get patients in who say “I just can’t, I’ve been told I can’t wear contact lenses” and one of the most important things that we do in our practise is obviously checking your prescription, but one of the most important things is the curve on the front of the eye. So, until we know what the curve is, it’s very hard to diagnose which way we can go.

Contact Lens Types

There’s lots of different types of contact lenses. There are soft lenses and within the soft lens world there’s disposable lenses and conventional lenses.

Soft Contact Lenses

So, we still fit conventional lenses depending on what your prescription is, or what the shape of your eye is. Like I said, unless we know what the shape of your eye is, it’s very hard to know which direction we’re going.

Rigid Contact Lenses (Hard Contact Lenses)

Then there’s rigid lenses and within rigid lenses there’s lots of different options. And within both types of lenses, soft lenses and rigid lenses, there’s different breathing lenses and lenses have different modules depending on how soft or floppy, or stiff they are.

Your Lifestyle

So, the same again, it depends on you, allergies, the shape of your eye, what you need, what you don’t need, whether you’re wearing lenses during the day or whether we need to discuss wearing lenses overnight.

Whether you need lenses for distance, computer and reading, is it for sport, is it for social, I mean, there’s a gamut of options.

It really depends on what you need, how often you want to wear them, the combination of your prescription, allergies, but one of the most important things is the relationship between your prescription and the curve on the front of your eye. And that’s what we’re going to marry together for you and work out what works for you.

Contact Lens Solutions

The next subset is stack of different solutions out there. Depending on what your body type is like allergy-wise, there’s particular solutions you need to stay away from and there’s particular solutions that will work well for you. So, different preservatives work well for some patients and not for others. There’s a real combination and permutations of all these different things that we need to marry together to work out what individually is going to work for you.

To Us, You’re a Real Person!

One size and one type of solution does not work for everybody and that’s what we do at Ezekiel Eyes, we tailor make for you, the patient, and individualise, and we want to spend that time to work out what do you need? What do you desire, what do we need to get you across the line, to get you to be happy with the quality of your vision and the quality of the life that you desire.

Contact Lenses for Astigmatism

(Leigh)- And if I’ve got astigmatism, you can get contact lenses for that too?

– Absolutely, so depending on where the astigmatism is in your eye or on the front of your eye, or within your eye, will depend on what type of lens is going to work for you. You know, and astigmatism could actually be more of a distortion than an astigmatism and that just depends on where it is as to what we can do to help you. But certainly, astigmatisms can be corrected with contact lenses, absolutely.

Disposable Contact Lenses

(Leigh)- Great, okay. And these disposable lenses, what varieties do they come in?

(Damon)- Oh, my goodness, so disposable lenses, there’s dailies, there’s fortnightlies, and there’s monthlies, so you know, depending on what you require, depending on which way to go.

Certainly, there’s a strong desire these days for dailies because dailies are so much easier. You wear them once, you through them out. You don’t have to use solution so there’s no potential preservatives involved.

So, if we can minimise compliance for patients and make it easier for the patient, then a daily would be the way to go. But, there’s a certain issue with all disposables that one size fits everybody and that, you know, just does not work.

That’s what the beauty of what we do in our practise at Ezekiel Eyes is that we’ll customise and workout what is going to work for you.

How do Soft Contact Lenses Work?

– Yeah, for sure. That’s good. So, tell me about how do contact lenses work?

– So, contact lens, depending on the type of contact lens you desire, so a soft lens is going to wrap on the curve of your eye, like the cornea, so the back of the lens needs to fit on the back of your eye and the front of the contact lens has got the prescription. So soft lenses are very simple.

How do Rigid Contact Lenses Work?

The rigid lenses are a lot more complicated and that really depends on the curve on the front of your eye.

So, if the front of your eye’s like a soccer ball, that’s pretty simple to deal with. If it’s like the side of a rugby ball, so it’s long and short, that’s pretty easy to deal with.

We see a lot of patients at Ezekiel Eyes with very distorted eyes (e.g. Keratoconus). So, the front of their eye is not regular, it’s more like the end of a rugby ball so it’s like a cone distortion.

So, in that case, what we’re going to do is fit you with a rigid lens that sits off the cone and the tear layer between the back of the lens and the front of the eye, is going to overcome all that distortion and then we’ve got a new front to your eye which is like a soccer ball.

We can put a prescription on there and then make the vision absolutely amazing!

Unfortunately, with this type of person, they outgrow glasses and soft contact lenses. They’re just not going to do anything because of that irregularity.

So, by fitting a rigid lens, which is a specialised lens, we get particular curves, we can make, we can transform someone’s world. 

Did you know that rigid lenses can have text engraved on them? Check out this example below

Better vision than you get with glasses

(Leigh)- Yeah, for sure. And that quality that they get, their vision is so much better than contacts or glasses.

– Oh yeah, so with glasses and soft contact lenses they will be, they might only get a third of the way down our optical chart.

Whereas with this type of rigid lenses, there’s lots of different types of rigid lenses, we can get them, you know, maybe 80 to 90% or even 100% down to what we call 6-6/20-20.

So, it’s an amazing transformation.

– [Leigh] Fantastic!

– (Damon) And I guess, you know, we get patients in who when they come in and pick up their rigid lenses of whatever type that is, when they leave, so they’ve just picked them up, when they leave and they look outside and they’re like,

“I can see individual leaves on the tree!” -They are completely blown away!

It’s amazing for me because I stand back and take my vision for granted which is pretty reasonable.

For someone who thinks their vision is normal to then transform them to what I and you see, it’s like oh my goodness, really? That’s what I’ve been missing out on for so long!

So that’s a bit of a buzz. It’s like an adrenaline hit to go wow, we can make a difference!

(Leigh)- That’s incredible to … The things that they thought they would never be able to improve that just by coming to see you that you’ve be able to help them out.

(Damon)- It is a bit of a spin out, when you think about the difference you can make to the quality of someone’s life. It’s amazing.

If you’re a First Time Contact Lens Wearer…

– [Leigh] Yeah, that’s fantastic. So, what are some of the things that you would like to know if someone’s interested in trying contact lenses for the first time?

– (Damon) So, Leigh, one of the most important things for me is when a patient comes in, if a patient walks into my room and says, I want contact lenses, my job is easy because their mindset is that’s what I want.

The worst that I can do if a patient comes in and look, I might try them and they’re really not sure.

For me to talk someone into contact lenses is not going to work so patients who walk in and strangle me and say, Damon, give me contact lenses. It’s easy because their mindset’s there. I only have to do my art and the science to get them across the line.

So if you’ve got the right mindset, you know what you want, or you’ve got some options we’ll talk about the options, I’ll lay them on the table all the different things that we could do for you whether it’s a soft lens and/or a rigid lens or the different types of rigid lenses.

Then my job is really easy because the patients come in and says, Damon, help me. I know I need contact lenses, let’s do it, what do you recommend?

(Leigh)- Yeah, that’s really good. That you know that they’re motivated to succeed.

(Damon) Tap on the link on our Contact Us page, and you’ll find all our details there.

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Wasn’t it great to hear Damon’s enthusiasm? Did you know that he was appointed President of the International Society of Contact Lens Specialists (ISCLS) in October 2018?

He values the relationships he builds everyday, with people like you, and a panel of international colleagues, who share advice (and sometimes humour) with Damon!

Book an appointment to see Damon or Rhiannon today!

The 5 Do’s and 5 Don’ts of Contact Lens Wear

Watch this video below

Cleaning

Cleaning your contact lenses is very important as dirty contacts can result in infections to your eyes.

Ultraviolet light blocking

Another feature of contact lenses is the ultraviolet (UV) light blocking. Because there is a link to the development of cataracts this has become an important issue.

The contact lens adds a small degree of protection against transmission of harmful UV radiation to the cornea and into the eye. Contact lenses do not replace sunglasses because they only cover the cornea and not the entire eye. Hence they work better as a complement to sunglasses and are extra protection against UV.

Ready to talk more about contact lenses? 

Book an appointment to see Damon or Rhiannon today!