Hayfever In Your Eyes And Contact Lenses, Reasons To Consider Laser Eye Surgery

Contact lenses provide a welcome relief from glasses, but unfortunately they don’t come without their own problems. The inconvenience of lenses steaming up, breaking an arm or nose bridge, and of course visiting the optometrist, is replaced by other troublesome occurrences which can often be more concerning.

Little things like waking up to a blurry alarm clock, regularly finding yourself on your hands and knees searching for that elusive dropped lens, and experiencing dry and irritated eyes, are all but uncommon to the frequent lenses wearer. But it’s when we look more closely that we start to uncover the real reasons they are so troublesome.

Contact lenses are seen as a low cost option for improving your vision, however over the course of a year you could be spending in excess of £300—and even more if you suffer from astigmatism or other conditions. That’s around £4500 over 15 years—about the same price of our standard Laser Eye Surgery treatment.

But the long term effects are not solely monetary. Failure to clean your contacts properly, wearing them for too long, or not replacing them as directed, can all contribute to long-term degradation of your vision. A large part of this is due to the need for a good oxygen supply in maintaining healthy eyes. With contact lenses completely covering the surface, the amount of oxygen that is able to reach the eye is dramatically reduced.

These issues are all causes of eye irritation, which can occur at any given time. If you are both a contact wearer and a hay fever sufferer, this may sound all too familiar.

Failing to clean and replace contact lenses as directed, on top of regular irritation, can lead to uncomfortable and serious infections. The onset of hay fever and high pollen counts can exacerbate the problem, easily ruining those precious summer months.

For those who require vision correction, contact lenses are clearly a less than ideal solution.

Hay Fever Explained

Hay fever is an allergic reaction, triggered by pollen from grasses and plants entering the nose or eyes—depending on where you live and which pollen spores are in the air.

Pollen bearing weeds and grasses flourish when significant rainfall precedes the summer months. Meaning the more rainfall we have, the higher the amount of pollen and grass, and the more prevalent and prolonged hay fever is.

Prevention And Treatment

“The problem with allergies is that most of us ignore them at the mild irritation stage – it’s only when it is really bad that we do something about it” — Glenn Carp.

Prevention is of course the best medicine, however there are immediate steps you can take to minimise the effects of hay fever on your eyes.

Firstly, choose disposable lenses so each day you are ridding your eyes of the pollen.

Secondly, minimise your exposure to pollen. Be conscious to avoid wearing contacts when taking part in activities where you are handling pollen such as gardening and cleaning, and try to keep windows closed and surfaces clear when the pollen count is high (keep an eye on the Met office website for the daily pollen count).

Thirdly, seek allergen-reducing eye drops from your local pharmacy to minimise symptoms; Be carefully to use them sparingly though as prolonged use may actually exacerbate symptoms.

Lastly, seek alternative options to managing your hay fever. Apart from the more apparent benefits of having Laser Eye Surgery to rid yourself of the need to ever wear contact lenses again, Mr Glen Carp, one of our most distinguished ophthalmic surgeons here at London Vision Clinic, shines some light on how else Laser Eye Surgery can benefit hay fever sufferers:

“People who have had Laser Eye Surgery tend to be much more aware of the state of their eyes in general. Following surgery, most patients with this problem find that, although they might have a little bit of an allergy, they are not as sensitive as usual and, if this isn’t the case, anti-allergy eye drops are recommended” — Mr Carp.

If you would like to book a consultation at London Vision Clinic, or find out more about how Laser Eye Surgery can benefit you, please leave us a comment, or give us a call us on 020 7224 1005.