Assignment Help on Contact Lens Final Report

Introduction

Contact lens wear is one of the major risk factors of corneal infection and corneal inflammation. Non-compliance behaviour towards prescribed care practices for lens wearers is one of the contributing factors towards adverse events.

Non-compliance is a big problem for the health care profession, and contact lens practice is not an exclusion. According to the literature, non-compliance varies from 40% to 91% among contact lens wearers, which is a major contributor to developing microbial and corneal infections among contact lens users (Ramamoorthy & Nichols, 2014). The recommendation provided to the lens wearers on safe handling, caring, cleaning and maintaining is mainly preventive in nature and does not offer any immediate and foreseen benefit to the users. It is thought that this fosters them to believe that non-compliance with the preventive factors does not have consequences for their eye health and sight. Additionally, Bui, Cavanagh & Robertson (2010) highlighted that non-compliance behaviours might also be considered as a consequence of limited efforts of lens wearers to rely on optimum cleaning regime or might be the result of inadequate knowledge and awareness regarding safe lens wear approaches. As of the Wu, Carnt & Stapleton (2010) report, non-compliance behaviour among lens wearers is considered as a substantial challenge for eye care practitioners. It is thought that the identification of behaviour and the attitude of CL wearers towards lens hygiene are of huge importance in order to improve compliance (Yung et al., 2007). Recording lens hygiene behaviour allows practitioners to inspect the impact of such behaviours towards success of CL wear and measures how compliant the lens wearers to the recommended practices of care. Moreover, to address the attitude of lens wearers and their likelihood to non-compliance, strategies need to be developed through which lens wearer’s attitude can be altered, for lowering the risk of infection among lens wearers (Carnt et al., 2011). 

The research study aims to find out contact lenses wearer opinions and attitudes on risk factors for eye infections during contact lens wear.

Hand Hygiene

The reasons for non-compliance are multi-factorial, and these factors might vary among different lens wearers. One of the most important factors which define care and wear attitude of lens wearers is hand hygiene. Hand hygiene is one of the most vital aspects of care for lens wearers, and those with poor hand hygiene are most likely to get exposed to the risk of corneal infections (Sorbara et al. 2015). As identified from prior studies, around 50% of lens wearers never hand wash, occasional hand wash or hand wash at least with water. Along with this, lens wearers do not give due importance to hygiene practices (Robertson & Cavanagh, 2011) to the recommendation delivered by practitioners on the usage of antiseptic hand wash gel. Similarly, poor hand hygiene was also reported by 34.2% contact lens wearers in another study (Wu, Willcox and Stapleton, 2015). Poor hand hygiene has been reported with significant contamination of lenses by microorganism. This has signified the importance of thorough hygiene instructions while marketing and recommending lenses in clinical settings.