Contacts and Glasses

Dr. Baron highly advises that contact lens wearers have glasses to supplement their visual needs. But why?

First: If you lose your contact lenses and do not have a spare pair you have another way of seeing – to work, to drive, and in emergencies.

Second: If you irritate your eyes from over wearing, foreign body irritation, or if there are days when you just cannot or do not want to wear your contacts – you can still see.

Third: You can have a home self-test. At night, you can put your glasses on for an hour or two; during that time your vision should be clear within an hour with your latest spectacle prescription if it is up-to-date. If your vision is not clear, you either need a new spectacle prescription or you are having problems with your contact lenses. In either case, you should be re-evaluated soon.

Fourth: By wearing your glasses for an hour or two each day, you minimize long-term effects of extensive contact lens wear.

If you are a long term contact lens wearer and you have not had glasses for some time, you may take some time to re-adapt to seeing with glasses again. This is due to the fact that contact lenses offer the minimal amount of optical size changes, distortions, and aberrations. So when you get your glasses your visual world will be different through the glasses. To adapt to this, you should first wear your glasses sitting, and then slowly start walking with them.

Our criteria is that you have some other means of seeing and the prescription should be at least good enough that you could drive someone to the hospital in case of an emergency.