Saudi GazetteTo enhance their beauty, women spend thousands of riyals on a variety of cosmetic products. One such beauty product that has gained immense popularity in the past few years is the contact lens. It's not just a medical device for vision correction anymore but has moved out of traditional boundaries to cast a new look, especially for women, enabling them to change the color of their eyes in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, some women rush into the fashionable trend without inquiring about the manufacturing quality or safety of these lenses before purchasing them. Teenagers wear colored contact lenses without any awareness of the impact on eye health and without reading the instructions on proper use and care of the lenses. “My daughter is obsessed with wearing colored contacts when she goes to parties and weddings. What influences her decision of which lenses to buy is their color and how she will look in them, and not their quality,” complained a concerned father. “We constantly have to remind her to buy solution to clean the lenses regularly. I once caught her and her friends trying on each other's contact lenses and sharing them with each other. This is a very unhealthy practice,” he added. To lure inexperienced young women into buying these products, some salesmen have dubbed certain contact lenses with desirable names, such as cat eyes, ‘Nancy Ajram's contacts', ‘Haifa Wahbi's contacts', and many more. In some cases, the company's name and the place of manufacture are not even mentioned on the pack. In crowded malls, some salesmen carry colored contact lenses around in suitcases to show female shoppers; as if they were selling perfumes or magazines! Other women purchase colored contact lenses from their hair dressers or at beauty salons. For consumers' safety, ophthalmologists stress the importance of buying lenses from professional optical shops or clinics. One should buy contact lenses manufactured by licensed and certified companies that have well-known brand names and a good reputation. The lenses should be stored at a lower than average temperature to preserve their quality and consumers must always check the date of expiry of the contacts before purchase. Women who are not careful when using lenses are putting their eyes at risk. “The contact lenses must be sterilized before putting them on and after taking them off. Hygiene is very important,” said Dr. Hussein Zamel, an eye doctor at the International Medical Center. “I have patients coming in with eye infections and inflammation as a result of improper cleaning of the lenses. The problem is that the cornea is extremely sensitive and it can become infected and scarred permanently, which can affect eye sight,” he added. Women should be very careful and must adopt certain guidelines while using lenses such as buying new lenses periodically. Contact lenses should not be used for more than six months. Moreover, they should avoid wearing them for more than six hours a day, at a stretch. __
