Is It Harmful to Wear a Regular Contact Lense if You Have Astigmatism?
March 30th, 2010 | See the Top Answers to this Question Below
I recently found out that I have astigmatism but I’ve been wearing regular lenses this whole tI ame. I really like the lenses I currently have but they aren’t available for astigmatism. Is it damaging to my eye if I continue wearing my regular lenses that aren’t made for astigmatism? I don’t wanna damage my eye if that’s the case.
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No it will not "damage" your eyes in any way. It may mean that your vision is not as clear as it coulle be if you wore astigmatism contact lenses (but this also depends on how big your astigmatism is). It may also cause eye strain or headaches
I believe it is as I was refused contacs since I have an astigmatism.
Check with you ophthalmologist or optometrist to be sure.
over time yes.
wear contacts plus astigmatism
In short, the vision solution that your eye doctor has prescribed is the simple solution to an astigmatic problem. If your astigmatism isn’t too pronounced the eye doctor will choose to slightly increase your overall vision correction to compensate for about 50% of the astigmatism you have in your prescription. This would result in better vision than if the astigmatism wasn’t corrected at all but it is not the ideal solution because you are not getting near perfect vision.
Toric lenses, which are lenses designed to correct for astigmatism, are fitted to correct for astigmatism and would therefore provide you with a much sharper vision. The down side is that the fitting of these lenses requires more skill and can cost much more than regular lenses.
To answer your basic question about damage to the eye – the answer is no. There is no damage. You are only compromising your quality of vision but not the health of your eyes.
If you have a low astigmatism, the doctor usually would not prescribe contacts with astigmatism (called toric lenses). Astigmatism causes your eyes to scatter light, so the more astigmatism you have, the harder it is to see at night or in dim situations. The lowest power they make toric lenses is -0.75, so if you have less than that, they don’t make a toric lens for it. Your eyes will not suffer if you only have less than -0.75 in astigmatism. If you have more than that, you really strain your eyes if you try to drive or do work at night, so having toric lenses would relieve any problems.You might not even notice the difference during the day (or in a bright room) because no matter how much light your eyes scatter, there’s more light coming in.