Can I please alert you all to the dangers of swimming with contact lenses in.

[chipmonkey]

this lady has lost the sight in one eye after swimming with her contact lenses in.
Acanthamoeba is found in tap water/pool water/shower water and is not killed by chlorine. It's a rare infection but very painful and sight-threatening.
I warn all my contact lens patients about this but I know some are still very blase about it.
So best not to rinse lenses with tap water, swim or shower with them in.

How about wearing lenses at a spa?sauna?steam room etc?

I don't go swimming because I can't see jack without my lenses and there's a fair chance I would fall over or walk into pool. Oh, and also because I hate swimming :-D

I'm another all day all night for a monther. I don't ever take mine out. And now I'm scared [winnle]

Blimey. Do people swim in contacts, eyes open, no goggles?
I always thought they would float away.

Didn't know about the dangers of tap water - other than not soaking your lenses in it which I admit to having done on drunk sleepovers in my youth

There are two reasons why contact lens wearers get this where non contact lens wearers don't.
1/ Contact lenses can cause small abrasions on the corneal surface which the acanthamoeba can "latch on" to, making infection more likely.
2/ The amoeba attaches very easily to the contact lens surface itself. They attach more easily to soft lenses than to rigid lenses.

Rigid Gas permeable contact lenses have an excellent track record but I am aware of at least one case of acanthamoeba with them. But the person in question had a very strong prescription, dreadful vision both with and without the contact lenses and was completely unaware that her contact lens case was filthy by most people's standards. They don't absorb fluid in the same way as a soft lens. Also acanthamoeba can attach to the surface of of a soft contact lens much more easily than to a rigid lens.

There is a higher incidence of this in extended wear as well.
And to be honest, I really don't encourage extended wear if I can help it. I know they're convenient, but I have never been happy with the idea that the patient is expected to shower in them. I prefer oldfashioned sleep without contact lenses, then shower, then insertion of lenses.

Speedo used to do good prescription goggles, I'm sure they still do but our practice doesn't stock them. We have replaced them with other goggles where you can actually have two different powers, one for each eye. They are great but the name escapes me, I will have a look in work tomorrow.
There are others which you can have made up to your exact prescription, I did find in the past that they were more prone to leaking than the generalised ones and they're usually twice the price.

Gallic it's an amoeba rather than a bacteria and it's not airborne. I don't think you could catch it from steam but I would expect it could be lurking on the surfaces in a steam room.

Chip I can honestly say my eyes feel far better and less irritated now that I wear 24/7 lenses as opposed to daily disposables. Plus I don't have to worry about dozing off on the couch and waking up with my eye lids stuck together.

Oh if you could get the name that would be great chipmonkey dh needs something after dd knocked his prescription sunglasses off in the sea on holiday. Once I can drag him to opticians for first time in 10 years as we really can't keep mending his only glasses and is blind without them and probably way off his original prescription

Claim to fame here - I was the 2nd reported case of this in the uk 20 years - acanathameba kerititus (sp ??) I ended up in hospital for over 2 weeks, had my eye scraped whilst awake then surgery. I had rinsed out my lenses case with tap water and the bug got in !! It was horrific my eyes are in all sorts of journals as I was in a teaching hospital and no one had seen it. 2 years later I had laser surgery as I hated hated glasses - my eyes are just starting to go now with middle age and I'm dreading getting glasses again

Schrodingers, silcone hydrogel is my lens material of choice. And I would fit a silicone hydrogel lens over a bog-standard daily disposable any day. They let tonnes more oxygen in and don't dehydrate. But I fit them largely on a daily wear basis. That does include falling asleep on the couch, just not all night in bed. And when I do fit them on an extended wear basis, it's always with slight trepidation. Sometimes it is better. If you get a guy in who's a mechanic with filthy hands, it really probably is better than his fingers go into his eyes only once a month, rather than every day!

One of my colleagues was asked about extended wear lenses by a patient. My colleague is a receptionist, not an optometrist but is known for forthrightness. She asked the patient "Would you wear the same knickers for a month?" The patient concluded that she wouldn't and didn't ask again!

chipmonkey the info on goggles would be really useful. I confess I do sometimes wear my disposable contacts in the pool, even though I have been warned against it by my optician. The reason being, I genuinely can't see a thing especially in pools where the light isn't very good and when dd was small I was genuinely scared for her safety. If anyone could invent an alternative, I would jump at it! Can't have laser as I have astigmatism.

I just don't get on well with daily disposables, I hate my eyes they get very dry very easily and this seems to be way worse with dailies. After about 8 hours I can barely open my eyes with them they get so dry and awful feeling and I have tried loads of them. :(

I have astigmatism and latent long sightedness, my sight is terrible and I struggle to even see where I have put my lenses in the morning if I wear dailies. :(

Marking place...

I have been rinsing my gas permeables in tap water for 20 years.... How are you supposed to clean them? I use cleaner, rinse with tap water and then store in wetting solution, then just use a bit of wetting solution to put them in.

Yes chiefowl that's how I used to clean my gas permeables! And once a month had to put them in water with tablets in for a couple of hours (memory is a bit hazy on that though!)...

Noone has ever ever told me this in 14 years of contact lens wearing! How is that possible!!

I swim occasionally and always with goggles but frequently shower in them. I'm another who can't find the right changing room door without some kind of corrected vision.

Never rinse with water though (so safe there)

that was supposed to be once a week, pinkteddy! >

You are not supposed to rinse with tapwater for GP's any more, you are supposed to use sterile saline or use a solution which is good to both soak and rinse.
But.... GP's don't attract acanthamoeba as easily as soft either way.

I knew about this, there were lots of stories about acanthamoeba a few years ago. Lenses should never come into contact with normal water, only the saline/cleaning solutions.

Never ever clean your lenses in water, even cooled boiled. If your lens solution is expensive then Sainsbury's etc do cheap bottles of basic contact lens solution (saline, as far as I can tell). Use that for rinsing instead.

I used to be absolutely terrified of this, saw a story about it when I was about 16 and it stuck with me.

My hands are always wet from washing them when I put my lenses in, is that a no no then too?

I almost never wore glasses or lenses when I went swimming - my prescription is ~ -8 in both eyes, but I was more scared about losing the lens/specs than anything else. I could see enough not to fall over/into anything (except the chlorine footbath between the changing rooms and the pool) but whenever I went to a new swimming pool, I'd always go with someone else first so they could tell me where to go.

I haven't worn lenses for years now though - I started getting dry and irritable after a few hours' wear in my left eye so stopped voluntarily before I had to.

Rilla - yes, your hands should be dry.

Whoops. Bit scared to wear contacts today tbh!

Not a contact lens wearer,but I swim in glasses too,myopic astigmat and can't see DCs without them.
It works fine,possibly if you were a really serious swimmer it would be a problem,but for moderately serious me it is fine.
You can't dive in them as the water swirls behind them and rips them off and then you have to spend a long time trawling the bottom of the pool looking for them

Yes, but considering the number of people who wear soft contact lenses, how realistic a problem is it? Is it on a par with getting legionnaire's disease from your showerhead, or a flesh eating superbug from a scratch?...

Aren't normal infections, ulcers and blood vessels growing into the cornea the real risk of contact lenses, rather than an exceptionally rare amoebic infection? And also a suspicous increase in the number of people suffering from dry eyes after years of contact lens use, even after they stop wearing their contact lenses (ie a possible causal link between soft contact lenses and chronic, incurable dry eyes?)?