Contact Lenses

Clarity & Convenience

Contact lenses can correct your nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. Among Americans who need vision correction, about 20% wear contact lenses. Contact lenses can also provide a full field of unobstructed vision, which is great for sports. If you were told in the past that you were not a candidate for contact lenses, chances are that’s not true today. There are more convenient and healthy contact lens options than ever. At Snyder Optometry, we will help you determine if contact lenses are right for you.

Colored or Decorative Contact Lenses

Contact lenses also come in colors and styles that instantly enhance the natural color of your eyes. They can make green eyes even greener, for example, while other colored lenses can totally change the color of your eyes, as in from brown to blue.

Many colored contacts are designed to contain a range of colors so that the appearance looks more natural and blends better with your eyes. Depending on the needs of your eyes, we can offer colored lenses that are more breathable and more comfortable. The less you feel your contact lenses, the more you can go about what you do without irritability.

Disposable Contact Lenses

Disposable contact lenses fall into two categories, “daily-wear”, which means you wear the contacts only during the day but not while sleeping. “Extended-wear” means you wear them continually for two or more days, including while asleep. Disposable contacts can be prescribed for either daily-wear or extended-wear, depending on your eye physiology and needs.

So why throw contact lenses away? The more frequently you replace your contact lenses, the healthier and more comfortable your eyes will be. Protein, calcium, lipids and other substances found naturally in your tears can build up on your contact lenses. These deposits make your contacts less comfortable and can make your eyes more prone to infection.

Extended Wear Contact Lenses

Today’s extended-wear contact lenses are made with a product called silicone hydrogel, which allows significantly more oxygen to pass through the lens to the eye than previous extended-wear lenses. This decreases the risk of hypoxia, a condition that makes the cornea more susceptible to inflammation and infection. Extended-wear contact lenses may be the right option for you if you want to wake up every day with clear vision.

Nearly all soft lenses prescribed for extended-wear today are disposable contacts. During your contact lens fitting and follow-up, we will advise you whether you can wear extended-wear contacts overnight and how many days of continuous wear your eyes can tolerate.

Multi-focal and Mono-vision Contact Lenses

Once we reach our 40’s, presbyopia (common in aging adults), makes it difficult to focus on very near objects. Reading glasses used to be the only option available for those who desire to read a food menu or do other everyday tasks that require good near vision. Today, a number of multifocal contact lens options are available for you to consider. Multifocal contact lenses offer the best of both worlds: great distance and near vision without any glasses at all.

Mono-vision contact lenses use your dominant eye for your distance vision and your non-dominant for near vision. Since each lens will only have one power, you can use a number of different types of contact lenses such as disposables, tinted, soft, gas permeable, etc. If you are a good candidate for mono-vision lenses, you may experience decreased depth-perception.

Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) Contact Lenses

Rigid Gas Permeable contact lenses are stiffer lenses made of durable materials that transmit oxygen to your eyes. RGP lenses should not be confused with old-fashioned hard contact lenses, which are now essentially obsolete.

RGP contact lenses are smaller than soft contact lenses. They also provide better vision, durability, and deposit resistance than soft contact lenses. And because they last longer than soft lenses, they can be less expensive in the long run. RGP contact lenses do require a longer adaptation than soft contact lenses. For certain corneal diseases like Keratoconus, RGP contacts are essential in providing the highest quality vision.

Soft Contact Lenses

Initial comfort is the primary reason why people prefer soft contact lenses over Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) contact lenses. But unlike RGP lenses, some soft contact lenses don’t allow enough oxygen through to your eyes. This can lead to corneal problems as time and usage progress.

When you blink, soft lenses are more likely to shift and distort. This triggers your eyes to refocus, which can be bothersome if you’re reading or performing functions that require concentration like driving or participating in sports. Our expertise at Snyder Optometry will give you the perfect fit and vision.