Australia has become the first country outside the United States to take on NaturalVue (etafilcon A) brand one day contact lenses for myopia and presbyopia control. The NaturalVue contact lens portfolio includes sphere, toric, multifocal, and multifocal toric.
Sydney optometrist Oliver Woo became the first Australian customer to take on the contact lenses, which have been developed by Visioneering Technologies (VTI).
Mr. Woo, who was the first orthokeratologist in Australia to obtain a fellowship from the International Academy of Orthokeratology and Myopia Control, said he was thrilled to be VTI’s first local customer.
“The lenses have been shown to slow myopia progression in children, and to provide excellent near and distance vision in presbyopic adults,” said Mr. Woo. “I’m particularly excited to add Visioneering’s NaturalVue multifocal one day contact lenses to my options for nearsighted children.”
Dr. Stephen Snowdy, CEO of Visioneering Technologies, said the NaturalVue multifocal addresses the optical risk factors associated with myopia progression (peripheral hyperopic defocus, accommodative lag, and amplitude of accommodation), while simultaneously providing vision for children that is on par with spectacles.
“This combination of features is made possible by the optical design, which incorporates a completely novel aspheric design that has distance power in the centre, with smoothly progressive plus power increasing toward the periphery. There is no spherical portion to our design; the relative plus power begins increasing immediately from the centre, accelerates, and increases by many dioptres by the edge of the optic zone. The blur induced by the peripheral plus power is suppressed by the visual system, resulting in clear distance vision with deep depth of focus for near vision,” said Dr. Snowdy.
He said the same contact lens is used in presbyopia to provide “excellent simultaneous near, intermediate, and distance vision. The power profile, other than the central distance power, is the same for all of our lenses, so prescribing NaturalVue MF is as simple as optimising the distance vision; there is no need to fiddle with different ADD powers in either children or presbyopic adults.”
VTI has appointed Corneal Lens Corporation (CLC) NZ Ltd and its associated company Contact Lens Centre Australia as authorised distributors of NaturalVue in New Zealand and Australia.
