Supporting a lifetime of contact lens wear

CooperVision focused on ‘a lifetime of contact lens wear’ at 100% Optical (1–3 March), discussing how practitioners can proactively retain patients as they transition through life stages.

Christina Olner, head of professional affairs UK and Ireland for CooperVision, said: “We’ve chosen this focus because we want to collaborate with eye care professionals here in the UK to support them to keep their patients happy and healthy in contact lenses for a lifetime.”

The stand presented CooperVision products and tools to support patients from early years, into adulthood, and through to later life.

Olner said: “It’s important to check in every time you see a patient for an aftercare that the lenses they are wearing still meet their needs. We know that lifestyles change, wearing habits change, and vision needs change as patients transition through life stages. We want practitioners to be proactive in assessing and then recommending changes at each of those stages.”

Focusing on those early years of a patient’s life, Olner shared: “We’re very passionate about myopia at CooperVision and so we want to encourage eye care professionals (ECPs) to bring children into the category as myopia management patients. We then appreciate that those children will graduate out of myopia management contact lenses and want to move into another lens.”

She referenced a 2024 CooperVision survey of 487 UK wearers and ex-wearers of contact lenses, sharing: “We know that patients who are brought into the contact lens category before the age of 25 are more than three times as likely to stay in the category for 10 years or more, than those who are brought in between the ages of 26 and 35.”

The next milestone CooperVision highlighted was as contact lens wearers progress through adulthood. The company shared that 65% of dual wearers of spectacles and contact lenses find wearing contact lenses works best for participating in sport (according to CooperVision data from a 2020 YouGov consumer survey of 505 adults in Great Britain who wear contact lenses and glasses).

Meanwhile, UK dual wearers spend 2.3 times more money annually on their vision correction solution than spectacles-only wearers, CooperVision has estimated.

The CooperVision contact lens portfolio can cover 99.9% of refractive errors, the manufacturer suggests. This is according to 2021 data with an Rx coverage database of 101,973 wearers aged between 14 and 70.

Olner said: “We have a real breadth of availability for ECPs to select for their patients.”

CooperVision also highlighted its options for presbyopic contact lens wearers, including MyDay multifocal, clariti 1 day multifocal, and the Biofinity multifocal products.

“We know there is significant contact lens drop out in that transition zone into presbyopia. Being proactive and helping patients to understand their changing vision needs, often before they happen, can be a really useful way to retain those patients in the category,” Olner said.

She highlighted: “What we hear from those patients, anecdotally, is that they don’t come in to see their eye care professionals before they drop out of the category, and it is largely driven by frustration with not being able to do everything that they want to do in their contact lenses, in particular, reading things up close.”

“We have fabulous products in the market across the manufacturers to deal with presbyopia, so there really is no reason that those patients should be dropping out at that age anymore,” she added.

CooperVision highlighted the support available for practices, including the OptiExpert tool for selecting the most appropriate contact lens for a patient, the CooperVision Learning Academy, and the My Lens Life programme to support patients through the journey.