Acuvue Oasys Lenses Cause Red Eyes
Published October 12th, 2007 in Small TalkNote: I have switched back to Acuvue 2 lenses, this time opting for the colored ones.
Previously, I mentioned that I was having problems with my “Acuvue Oasys with Hydraclear Plus” contact lenses. My eyes would become red, irritated, itchy, and would even have a minor discharge. It was surprising because these are new lenses and supposed to be some of the best you can buy (and sure should be for the price!). After a bit of research and experimentation, I found a solution that works for me.
I was previously using Kirkland (Costco brand) multi-purpose solution. When I found out that the solution may contribute to the problem, I tried Aquify, which is made by CIBA Vision Corporation. Aquify was a big improvement. I started to be able to wear the contact lenses for several days without problems, but they still weren’t as problem-free as I would have liked. With the previous brands of lenses I have used, I have never had any problems, but I was still ending up with red, irritated eyes. Sometimes it took 3 days, sometimes 7, but the lenses never consistently lasted as long as they were supposed to.
I moved on to a solution called “Clear Care” by the same company. It uses hydrogen peroxide (among other ingredients) to really clean the lenses. I’m sure you can imagine that hydrogen peroxide is not something you want in your eyes, and the cleaner comes with a special case that you have to use, which neutralizes the solution. After a couple of hours (they recommend six or more), the solution is essentially harmless. Since you can’t put Clear Care directly on your lenses before putting them in, I use the Aquify drops for that purpose. I like to have one or two drops on the lenses before putting them in.
Since I’ve been using Clear Care, I have had no problems with the Acuvue Oasys lenses. No more red eyes. No more irritation. No more discharge (”eye-goopies”). The lenses are great now. If I hadn’t been so frustrated by the ordeal, I would probably say these are now the best lenses I have ever had. Unfortunately, I am still rather annoyed that neither Acuvue nor the eye doctor even mentioned the possibility of problems nor potential solutions. If you’re having trouble with your Acuvue Oasys lenses, give Clear Care a try.
As a final note, the Aquify solution came with Aquify Long Lasting Comfort Drops. These drops are awesome! Commercials are always trying to convince you that their drops are “just like tears,” but I’ve typically found that drops for contact lenses are either slightly irritating or don’t last long. These drops work perfectly for me and I definitely recommend them if you wear contacts and have to work on computers for long periods of time.
13 Responses to “Acuvue Oasys Lenses Cause Red Eyes”
- 1 Pingback on Oct 12th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
- 2 Pingback on Jun 20th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I’m so glad I came across your blog. I’ve been having the EXACT same problems with my eyes for the past couple of years. I’ve been wearing contacts since I was 17, and had no problems whatsoever. Then I switched to the Acuvue Oasys a few years ago. They were alright at first, then I started getting eye infections. My eye doctor told me that I just must not be cleaning my lenses properly and to try a different solution. Well that didn’t work. So then he said I had eye allergies and prescribed me Patanol. I used this every day, before I put my contacts in and after I took them out, and it seemed to help the redness a bit and kept the infections away for a year or so. But then I bought some new contact lenses (same brand) a few months ago since I ran out and ever since I’ve been on those new ones, I’ve been to the doctors 5 times with eye infections. I’m so fed up and frustrated since I don’t want any eye damage. They kept saying that I must be touching my eyes and keep re-contaminating my eyes, but I was like no! I’ve been really clean, using new contacts each time my eyes clear up, using brand new makeup, I’m not doing anything wrong. So I searched about the contacts online and found your blog. i’m so glad I’m not the only one with this problem! I’ll try out the Clear Care solution, but I plan on switching my contacts to a different brand soon.
I tried Acuve Oasys for the first time on 6/15, and on 6/19 a slight irritation started in my left eye. I could not bare this feeling so I removed the contact. It just got worse as the day progressed. At first I thought perhaps I had conjunctivitus (sp?) so I made an appt with my family doctor on 6/20. My doctor immediately advised me that I had an ulcer on my cornea and I needed to see a specialist right away. Long story short, I lived in total darkness for a little over a week as sunlight or any light was too painful to bare. I could have lost sight in this eye and today it is still not the same. I have been advised to never wear contacts again. So after 20 years of wearing contacts, I am having to change everything and believe me it has become a financial burden. I am writing this story in hopes to see if this is a pattern for this particular contact, because if it is this product should be banned.
im very surprised a lot of people have problems with these contacts. i’ve been wearing acuvue-2 for two years or so and they were perfectly fine. however, due to lack of oxygen, my optometrist told me to try oasys. so i tried the trial ones in december 2007 and they felt great. i didnt find any difference between acuvue-2 and oasys except they were harder to take out. after the trial, i bought a few boxes and finished my remaining acuvue-2. in february 2008, i started wearing oasys and i don’t know why, my right eye felt really irritating. it was painful everytime i blinked. when i took off the lenses, there were lots of veins around the white part of the eyes. i think i used it for around a month and then i went to an optometrist (another optometrist). i told him all the symptoms and he was actually quite surprised to hear all about it. he said my eyes were fine and told me to try advance. i wore them for the trial and they felt the same as oasys. the veins in my eyes never faded, even when they are taken out. i went back again and asked for Focus dailies ones because i thought it would be cleaner.
i use to wear contacts around 6 days a week, but now i have went down to only around 3. it’s july 2008 now but the veins in my eyes are still there! i went to a family doctor and he thought i had pink eye. he prescribed me antibiotics for the eyes and i used them for 10 days (glasses everyday) and the veins were still there.
after reading this blog, i immediatly went and bought clear care, except its not called clear care here in australia, its called Aosept. i opened new oasys two days ago and i’m not sure if it is because of the solution from the new contacts, but my eyes were really veiny. i wore glasses yesterday and plan to wear contact lenses today and see if aosept will be better for me. =)
From what I’ve read (and I had the same experience), pink eye seems to be the common thought when these lenses first cause trouble. Hopefully the Aosept will work for you; it (as Clear Care) helped a lot for my eyes, but in the end I switched back to Acuvue 2. I’ve never had problems with the Acuvue 2 lenses and, with the Clear Care, their comfort level is pretty close to the Oasys lenses. The Oasys lenses are supposed to be more breathable, letting in significantly more oxygen, but that doesn’t help too much if they’re causing all kinds of trouble! You might want to wear glasses for a few days before switching back to contacts to make sure they’ve had some time to recover. Hopefully you’ll have better luck!
I’ve had problems with Acuvue Oasys as well. After several successful months with Oasys, I started getting throbbing and red eye. The red eye doesn’t seem to want to go away despite my not wearing contacts at all anymore. Before Oasys, I wore Acuvue and Acuvue2 with NO problems for 14 years.
I have just switched from daily wear contacts to the Acuvue Oasys lenses at the
urging of my optometrist. I am also experiencing similar symptoms as you all have
stated. The first week went well, the contacts seemed comfortable. But now every
time i put the contacts in my vision seems to blur and then my eyes becomes very
irritated and red. I ended up having to wear my glasses for about 4 days for the
irritation to stop. My eyes became very light sensitive and teared like crazy, similar
feeling to tearing the cornea(which i have done before). I have tried putting in a brand
new pair and after a few hours the same result. I am happy to see there are others
out there experiencing similar reactions and i will try switching cleansers. Hopefully that will solve the problem. My eyes still have the red veins running through them too…doesn’t seem to want to clear up.
The switch to a peroxide-based cleaner really made the difference for me when I started using Oasys contacts.
I had been using Acuvue 2 and any mulipurpose solution I could get without any problems, other than evening dryness. My optometrist suggested Oasys, which were super comfortable for the first few weeks. Then I started having discomfort when inserting them, with burning, and a feeling like the lens were sticking to my cornea. They would in fact not “slide” around like their supposed to, for the first 1-2 hours.
The key here is that when I starting using Oasys the doc gave me a one week sampler of Ever Clean, a peroxide cleaner. Since I still had a few bottles of mulipurpose, when the Ever Clean ran out i went back to opti-free, and about 1 week after that the problems began. When my doctor gave me another Ever Clean sample, the problem went away almost immediately.
The optometrist explained that the subtle differences in people’s tear chemistry, along with the different formulations of solutions interacting with silicone hydrogel. can make a big difference in comfort.
Just thought i would leave some information for everybody experiencing problems
with the Acuvue Oasys contacts. I ended up going back to the optometrist to have
my red veiny eyes checked. Turns out that the veins and redness were due to lack of oxygen which is really wierd since these contacts are supposed to let through more oxygen then other lenses. I had previously worn daily wear contacts for 24 years prior to this switch and had no problems. So now i am keeping my contacts out for at least a week and doing steroid/antibiotic drops. I will go back to the doctor in a week to make sure my eyes are totally healed. Then we will retry the Oasys lense using the peroxide type cleanser. i previously had used REPLENISH. The doctor thinks maybe the REPLENISH just wasn’t getting the protein deposits off my lenses which then caused the lack of oxygen to my eyes. So if any of you are experiencing this you need to wait AT LEAST A WEEK before putting contacts back in so that your eyes are totally healed. Then try the peroxide type cleanser. I will let you all know how my results are next week…hoping this will do the trick.
i went to an ophthalmologist two weeks ago and he said i have inflammation of the eyes. i have also been given steriod/antibiotic drops (FML) to use for 2 weeks and rest for another week. i’ll be meeting him again next week to see the results. i don’t see much changes so far…ive finished with the drops and my eyes still have red veins..sighh..
a family’s friend (optometrist) told me to try oasys again but with Clear Care this time. *hopefully* Clear Care will do the trick! =)
Oh thank goodness I found this. I thought I was losing my mind.
I’ve had nothing but problems with these since I started wearing them. The eye doc Rx’ed these last year at my eye appt and pretty much right away I started having really red dry eyes. I’ve worn contacts (Acuvue 2 mostly)since I was 14 and have never had any issues. Because I got pg about the same time as I got the new lenses, the redness, dryness and irratation was attributed to hormones. But here it is, 2 1/2 months after I had my baby and I’m still having issues.
I will have my husband go pick up some of the other cleaner until I can get to the eye doctor.
Thanks so much for posting this….like the previous commenter, I thought I was going crazy. The lenses were incredible the first week or so and then suddenly my eyes itched, the lenses dried out in my eyes, and my vision got blurrier (my latest prescription was a relatively big jump to something stronger….but with the Oaysis lenses it was quickly blurrier than the outdated script). They also didn’t last 2-weeks at all…within days they were too unbearable to wear.
That said, using the hydrogen peroxide daily made a big difference….my eyes were less red and I didn’t feel like I needed an entire bottle of eye drops to get through the day (although my vision was still slightly out of focus). So anyone who is stuck with a box of these lenses or has to wait a few days until getting in to the optometrist’s should try the hydrogen peroxide.
I’ve since revisited the eye doc and am trying out Focus Dailies (I used to use Acuvue Advance, which were MUCH more comfortable long-term than the Oaysis for me). My optometrist also rechecked my prescription and it hadn’t changed…it really was the lenses wigging out with my eyes. I think these lenses can be great for some people, but not for others (and for some of us, triggers an allergic response)….it’s all a matter of finding the best personal fit.