LENSES + CONTACT LENSES

The COMPETITIVE Edge

Do your patients have the right lenses and contacts for their sport of choice? 4 key considerations for getting it right

BY KARLEN MCLEAN

IT SEEMS SIMPLE: Your patient plays sports or participates in outdoor activities—and requires a visual correction.

Clearly, they will need prescription sports eyewear, or contact lenses for use with plano sports sunwear. But what about their specific lens options?

There are countless considerations that go into sports lens fitting and selection. Here, we check in with four sports-oriented ECPs to learn the key factors to dialing in the right solution.

Lens Materials

One of the first considerations: Which lens material is right for your active patient?

“The appropriate lens materials and treatments for sports are individualized,” says Charlie Blankenship, ABOC, lab manager of the Spectacle Shoppe in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “We mostly use Trivex.”

In addition, how dangerous is your patient’s sport from a visual perspective? Low-impact and high-impact sports dictate that you use different materials.

“We use polycarbonate and Trivex, depending on the patient’s visual needs and level of sports protection required,” says Rick Ross, O.D., of Performance Vision Center in Winter Park, FL.

Rx is certainly a top priority, especially with today’s ubiquitous high-base wrap performance sports frames. “Today there are sports frames that are highly curved, and these are now easier to fit lenses to, especially higher Rx’s over -4.00D,” says Carla D’Onofrio, LDO, owner of Optical Impressions in Cooper City, FL. “Grind lenses properly. Thin the minus lens edges and flatten plus lens centers. Match lens curvature as closely as possible to everyday-wear lenses.”

Lens Treatments

Photochromic, polarized, anti-glare, sports-specific tints, and more—how can you get this performance-enhancing treatment portion of the equation right?

The first step: Asking, listening, and learning what patients do with their eyes is especially important with sports vision in order to fill the right needs and weed out what won’t work.

Sports-specific tints in standard and polarized options, a growing area of interest with patients today, help wearers sharpen their vision and increase their sports performance.

“We’re recommending more and more sports-specialized tints like teal for tennis and yellow or copper for hunting and shooting,” says Blankenship. “There are now more polarized colors available and expansion in regular tints, like specialized colors for pilots.”

Another booming sports-oriented solution is polarization. But, while polarized lenses are a solid solution for water sports, they are not optimal for all sports.

“We recommend polarized for outdoor sports with caution,” Blankenship explains. “For example, no polarized [lenses] for skiing or serious golfing because the polarization can interfere with viewing terrain undulations properly.”

In addition, Blankenship veers away from recommending polarization for situations where viewing digital devices is important. “We have a driver whose digital dashboard blacked out when using polarized lenses,” he notes.

Even photochromic lenses are getting into the game as an Rx and plano sports sunwear option. In fact, many sports eyewear makers now offer plano sunwear with light-adaptive polarized lenses that change tint relative to the wearer’s light conditions. With sports such as mountain biking or trail running, where light conditions are changing constantly, photochromics can be a true benefit.

In addition, many parents today are looking to photochromics as a sports solution for their children. “Parents like adaptable lenses, because their kids play multiple sports so they get day-to-night, indoor-outdoor lens performance benefits,” says Dr. Ross. “We also fit anti-glare lenses for sports, especially when reflections at night are a consideration, like for those who play soccer or football under the lights.”

Contact Lenses

Eyecare professionals and their patients might choose contact lenses as a sports vision solution based on factors including personal preference, comfort, and visual performance.

“Many people today are choosing to wear contact lenses to enhance sports performance,” says D’Onofrio. “For example, I’m a pool player and have better vision with contacts when shooting pool. The advantages are a wider visual field and sharper vision.”

For safety’s sake—and depending on the visual risk—many situations call for contact lenses combined with plano sports eyewear.

“We fit contact lenses for sports because some athletes demonstrate better performance when they have the benefit of added peripheral vision that contacts give them,” says Dr. Ross. “When there is a risk of eye injury—like in racket sports—we also fit contact lens wearers with sports protective eyewear.”

One of the biggest movements in contacts for sports and beyond is daily-wear lenses, which can help make wearing contacts for sports easy.

“Now, weekend warriors can choose to use daily-wear contacts for sports and wear glasses the rest of the week,” D’Onofrio says.

Orthokeratology

Using therapeutic contact lenses to correct myopia is a specialty that helps improve daily vision—and sports vision. “My practice is largely pediatric, almost entirely specialty contact lenses, and of those 80% are ortho-K,” says Cary Herzberg, O.D., of Herzberg Optical in Aurora, IL.

“What could be easier than wearing a lens only at night?” he asks. “[With] nothing during the day to impede or slow down your efforts…there’s nothing much better than this, particularly for swimmers. Many of my ortho-K patients feel that it is a game-changer as far as what it can provide, controlling progressive myopia and serving as the best lifestyle choice out there.”

During the day, however, patients’ eyes should be protected not only from any unforeseen impact that could occur during sports, but also from dirt, dust, and other irritation, enhancing wearer comfort and performance.

“[Most] contact lens wearers should wear plano sports eyewear over their contacts, [partly] for protection from dry eye,” says D’Onofrio.

In addition to protection from eye injury, a wearer’s biggest issue is wind. “A dry eye is a very unhappy eye,” she says. “So fitting sports eyewear that blocks wind is imperative for, say, cyclists and motorcyclists.”