According to Contact Lens Spectrum, patients who suffer from presbyopia are projected to be the single largest group of potential contact lens wearers by 2018. With so many presbyopic patients flooding the market, fitting multifocal contact lenses is a smart way for eye care practitioners to grow their practices.
Presbyopic patients have not had too many options in the past when it came to contact lenses. As a result, contact lens usage drops among patients after the age of 45 which is when patients need vision correction because of presbyopia. The good news is that now, there are a lot of new multifocal contact lens options available. Is your practice ready to help fit these patients with new multifocal contact lenses?
Here are some tips to help you grow a successful multifocal practice:
- Focus on Your Patients: It helps when eye care practitioners ask patients what they need vision correction for. Does the patient need it for precision work? Does the patient need uncompromised distance vision? Are there lifestyle needs that the patient has where eyeglasses are not a great option? It is easier for eye care practitioners to decide which patients may be the best candidates for multifocal contact lenses once those questions are answered.
- Learn About Fitting For Presbyopes: Fitting prospective multifocal contact lens patients the first time can be challenging. Take advantage of contact lens manufacturers’ fitting tools in order to ensure that your patients are fit right the first time. CooperVision offers a fitting tool called the MultiTrak Calculator to help you calculate multifocal lens parameters directly from a spectacle prescription or an over-refraction, using lens-on-eye information. MultiTrack is available for your desktop computer and is a Web-based application, which gives you the added benefit of being able to order lenses directly from the application.
- Follow Up: Patients with presbyopia will need a follow up just to ensure that the vision correction is ideal for them. Following up with patients after a few days will allow eye care practitioners to adjust the prescription in necessary or even recommend a different modality based on the patient’s lifestyle needs. For example, patients who would like to wake up and see right away may benefit from extended wear contact lenses such as CooperVision’s Biofinity Multifocal contact lenses. If patients don’t want to deal with the hassle of contact lens maintenance, there is even a daily disposable multifocal contact lens option. CooperVision just introduced Proclear 1 day multifocal contact lenses. Whatever the need your presbyopic patient has, there are options.
Make sure to take advantage of the latest multifocal contact lens offerings and watch your multifocal practice thrive!