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Contact lenses are known for the correction of sight in patients that prefer a lens over a pair of glasses. But now, it may soon become the norm for contact lenses to be used to dispense medication directly into the eye, especially for the diagnosed patients of Glaucoma.
Traditionally treatment of the glaucoma has been via a course of eye drops. Now the medicated lenses will release products into the eyes that will assist in keeping pressure down and therby slowing the development of the condition. As glaucoma is a degenerative condition the treatment may be used for different people suffering any of the symptoms of the four types of disease which can affect varying ages and affect each patient in different ways.
Where the use of prescribed eye drops is not sufficient in more advanced cases, then laser treatment or surgery is currently used. This is only to slow the development stage of the disease as once it is onset it is not reversible.
While the use of contact lenses has been thought to be the ideal vessel for eye medication for the past number of years, it had not yet been advanced as it was very difficult to control. Now US Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology and Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a way for a lens to deposit the correct amount of medicine into the eyes as effective treatment. The materials they used to develop the lenses were those that have already had approval from the FDA. The consistency rates were measured and tested over weeks and months. The hope is that approval will be expedited as a result.
In addition to providing the medication they can still be used as lenses for corrective vision. As treatment is infinite once the condition is diagnosed, it is hoped that the approval of such a dispensing mechanism will make the ongoing process of treatment far easier and more reliable.