Authors:
José A. Vega, Anna Sulley, Rubén Velázquez Guerrero
 

Purpose: 
To evaluate the short-term fit, vision performance, subjective experiences, and preference when soft contact lens wearers were first fit with hydrogel lenses and then silicone hydrogel lenses. 
 

Methods: 
In these subject-masked, refit, bilateral wear studies, 84 participants were assigned to a sphere or toric study. Participants wore two different sphere lenses-ocufilcon D sphere (ocuD-S; hydrogel), fanfilcon A sphere (fanA-S; silicone-hydrogel), or toric lenses-ocufilcon D toric (ocuD-T; hydrogel), and fanfilcon A toric (fanA-T; silicone hydrogel) for 15 minutes each. Lens fit, visual acuity, subjective comfort and vision quality, and lens preference were collected. Paired T-Tests were used to assess differences between lenses, Pearson’s Correlation for association between variables, and a Binomial test for lens preferences. 
 

Results: 
44 participants completed the sphere study (36F:8M; age 27.7 ± 9.0 years), and 40 the toric study (28F:12M; age 25.6 ± 7.6 years). Lens fit acceptance was higher for fanA-S than ocuD-S, p=0.042 but similar between fanA-T and ocuD-T, p=0.13. Visual acuity was very good and similar between fanA-S and ocuD-S, (p=0.675), and between fanA-T and ocuD-T (p=0.088). Comfort was higher for fanA-S than ocuD-S (95.4±8.0 vs. 91.0±13.8, p=0.027), but similar between fanA-T and ocuD-T (95.3±8.4 vs. 92.7±11.1, p=0.077). Vision quality was high and similar between fanA-T and ocuD-T (93.1±8.6 vs. 91.5±10.3, p=0.347). Positive correlations were found between vision quality and comfort for ocuD-T (r=0.564, p<0.001) and fanA-T (r=0.619, p<0.001). More subjects preferred fanA-S over ocuD-S (64% vs. 36%, p=0.023) and fanA-T over ocuD-T (68% vs. 32%, p=0.047).
 

Conclusions: 
The fanA-S and fanA-T performed as good as or better than ocuD-S and ocuD-T, leading to higher subject preference. Greater comfort scores were observed with greater subjective vision quality scores for both ocuD-T and fanA-T lenses. Eye care professionals should be encouraged to consider refitting hydrogel contact lens wearers with silicone hydrogel lenses.