Taking a break from wearing contact lenses did not improve end-of-day comfort, according to a study of 25 symptomatic lens wearers.
The lens wearers participated in a randomised, cross-over study involving nine individual 12-hour days that comprised one spectacle (no lens) and eight lens wear days involving two different types of silicone hydrogel lenses.
Published in Optometry & Vision Science, August 2016, lenses were worn bilaterally for two-hour intervals on contact lens days, with wearers taking breaks of 0, 30, 60, or 80 minutes (repeated throughout the day). For each two-hour lens wear interval, new lenses were worn.
Wearers rated their ocular comfort on a zero to 100 visual analogue scale (0 = extremely uncomfortable); tear film and ocular parameters were assessed at the beginning and end of each study day.
results suggested once the length of lens wear exceeded the usual comfortable wear time, there was no benefit of short recovery periods
The authors wrote that the results suggested once the length of lens wear exceeded the usual comfortable wear time, there was no benefit of short recovery periods.
Although lens wear affected non-invasive tear film break-up time and conjunctival staining, there were no effects of recovery period length on non-invasive tear film break-up time (p > 0.05), tear meniscus height (p > 0.05), corneal staining (p > 0.05), conjunctival staining (p > 0.05), bulbar conjunctival redness (p > 0.05), or limbal redness (p > 0.05). There was no consistent effect of recovery period length on lid margin staining.