Contact lens complications in an urgent-care population: the University of California, Los Angeles, contact lens study.

OBJECTIVES: This is a prospective study in an urgent-care ophthalmic setting to investigate contact lens (CL) complications and their association with extended wear (EW).

METHODS: Data on CL designs, care system(s), and ocular complications were collected over a 6-month period.

RESULTS: One thousand three hundred and sixty-nine patients presented to the Jules Stein Eye Institute urgent care with symptoms of eye problems. Of these, 56 were identified with diagnoses etiologically associated with CL wear, and 49 were studied. The five most common ocular diagnoses found in our study were in the following order: epithelial staining or abrasion/epithelial defect, conjunctival injection, papillae, corneal neovascularization, and presumed microbial keratitis (PMK). Fifteen of 49 patients were diagnosed with PMK. The mean number of complications was 3.43 per eye. Most of the patients (65%) reported some form of EW. Analysis of the patients with PMK showed an association with EW. There seemed to be no statistical difference in the number of complications per symptomatic eye with hydrogel and silicone hydrogel lenses although 13 of the 15 patients with PMK were silicone hydrogel wearers.

CONCLUSIONS: We studied various aspects of care and compliance in an urgent-care population and found that most of our urgent-care patients slept with CLs on their eyes. Symptomatic CL wear-related complications, and specifically MK, strongly correlate with EW with less relation to lens design, material, and wear modality. We therefore conclude that CL EW is a risk factor leading to urgent-care visits.