Purpose:
To compare in vitro wettability retention for various silicone hydrogel contact lenses after a single soak in one of several multi-purpose contact lens care solutions.
Methods:
Lenses were soaked in various commercially-available multi-purpose solutions (MPS), and then soaked in ISO saline (prepared according to the ISO guidelines). After the lenses were air dried, the advancing contact angles of water drops were measured and the lenses were put back into the saline again for the next contact angle measurement. The contact lens soaks and advancing contact angle measurements were consistent with the in vitro sessile drop technique described by H.A. Ketelson et al. (Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces 40 (2005) 1-9) with the exception of rinsing the lenses with ISO saline instead of Unisol® saline, as Unisol® saline could impart additional wetting to the lenses. The process was repeated for nine cycles for each lens.
Results:
The wettability performance for the contact lenses pre-soaked in various MPS and cycled with ISO saline are shown in Table 1.
Table1 Number of cycles at which the contact lenses remained wettable
Conclusions:
Comparative wettability and conditioning of silicone hydrogel contact lenses from two established and two new multipurpose contact lens care solutions showed that all the care solutions exhibit some degree of wetting and conditioning of all silicone hydrogel lenses. Acuvue Oasys® and BiofinityTM lenses remained wettable over 9 cycles regardless of MPS used, indicating more lasting comparative wettability for these lenses. The wettability of PurevisionTM, Acuvue Advance®, and Air OptixTM lenses over 9 cycles was more dependent on the MPS used. The two new solutions, BiotrueTM MPS and RevitaLens OcuTecTM MPDS demonstrated a longer lasting wetting effect on these latter three lenses.