These days, contact lens wearers often tend to forget the strict hygiene instructions they need to follow. But you shouldn’t keep them in the shower at the beach to remove salt, or at home for that matter. Do not touch them with dirty or badly dried hands after washing. Because when lenses are placed on the cornea, they rub against it, constantly creating small breaches that are ideal breeding grounds for bacteria. If your hands are dirty, there may be a few specimens of the famous staphylococci on them, for example. On the skin, if they’re not golden, who cares? In the eye, this can cause significant damage. It often begins with pain, redness and sensitivity to light. It’s best to remove the lens as a matter of urgency and not hesitate to seek medical advice, not forgetting to tell us if you’ve been a little careless. Delayed treatment of an infection can leave serious consequences.
In all waters except the sea, there’s an even more dangerous parasite: the acanthamoeba amoeba. Much rarer but far more dangerous, it can be found in lakes and rivers, but also in our drinking water systems and swimming pools. Because this parasite has a superpower: it can survive as if in hibernation, in a sort of shell. There, no chemical treatment can reach it. The problem is, one of the places she loves to come back to life is our eyes. And it does so through the misuse of lenses, as explained by Prof. Eric Gabison, ophthalmic surgeon at the Rothschild Foundation in Paris. He teaches his interns to take very seriously patients who seem very sensitive with one barely red eye. It may be an amoeba that first settled on the corneal nerves.
Contact lenses also often lead to dry eyes, prompting patients to give up contact lens wear in favor of definitive laser vision correction to put an end to the side effects and risks of contact lens wear.