“A contact lens (also known simply as a contact) is a corrective, cosmetic, or therapeutic lens usually placed on the cornea of the eye.  Leonardo da Vinci is credited with describing and sketching the first ideas for contact lenses in 1508, but it was more than 300 years later before contact lenses were actually fabricated and worn on the eye. Rigid ones were produced and marketed first. Modern soft contact lenses were invented by the Czech chemist Otto Wichterle and his assistant Drahoslav Lím, who also invented the first gel used for their production.”

“Some soft contact lenses are tinted a faint blue to make them more visible when immersed in cleaning and storage solutions. Some cosmetic lenses are deliberately colored to alter the appearance of the eye. Some lenses now have a UV protection surface treatment to reduce UV damage to the eye's natural lens.”

(Wikipedia, Contact Lenses,3/5/2011)

“The use of contact lenses for reasons of cosmetics and for the correction of visual acuity is well known. However, use of contact lenses is known to result in the development of either or both superior epithelial arcuate lesions and superior arcuate staining. Additionally, debris such as mucin balls, cellular debris, lint, dust, bubbles, make-up, or the like ("back-trapped debris") may become trapped between the back surface of the lens and the eye. These problems have been found across the range of conventional soft contact lenses, but are found to be substantially more prevalent in the high oxygen permeability silicone hydrogel contact lenses introduced into the market within the last several years. Thus, a need exists for a lens that eliminates or reduces superior arcuate lesions and staining as well as back-trapped debris.” (Steffan et al, US Patent 7,825,170; 11/2/2010)

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Eyeglasses
Medicine   
Opthalmology  

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