Contact Lenses — Convenience and Complications

Abstract

Our society places a premium on convenience and efficiency. Medical care systems now cater to this American characteristic with quick-care walk-in clinics and same-day surgery. In this issue, Schein et al. and Poggio et al. document the risks of a sight-threatening disease born of convenience: contact lens–induced ulcerative keratitis ("corneal ulcers").^{1 , 2} The contact-lens industry has grown steadily in the past 40 years and will continue to expand because the public demands the correction of refractive errors without eyeglasses. Sixty million Americans are near-sighted,³ and many are good candidates for contact lenses. Polymethylmethacrylate (hard plastic) contact lenses were the standard of . . .