The Best Practices For Contact Lens Case Care.

Background: Contact lens storage cases are a potential reservoir for microorganisms.
Contamination of these lens cases can compromise contact lens wear and may result in a severe ocular infection. Many of the recommended hygiene practices do not necessarily ensure a case free of contamination and multipurpose solutions may not be effective against biofilm formation. Therefore, additional cleaning steps may be necessary. Only limited information is available to patients about case hygiene practices, and the advice given to patients varies from manufacturers and eye care practitioners because of the lack of evidence-based findings on the effectiveness of
these guidelines. The purpose of this literature review is to compile evidence based research to determine the best practices for contact lens case hygiene.
Methods: The Ferris State University FLITE Library online database was used to assimilate information. Only peer reviewed journal articles were reviewed that were published within the past five years.
Results: A recent study conducted by Vijay et al. found that the most widely used case hygiene regimen of rinsing with solution and air drying is not sufficient to remove biofilm of commonly recovered storage case bacterial contaminants. Adding the additional steps of rubbing then wiping the contact lens case with clean facial tissue along with the current recommendations was most effective in removing the biofilm. A study by Wu et al. showed that lens cases that were positioned face up while airdrying had a significantly higher rate of contamination (71%) compared with lens cases air-dried
face down (12%).
Conclusions: The clinical relevance of this project is based upon the needs of
patients. Poor understanding about best practices for case hygiene and differing opinions from manufacturers and eye care practitioners has led to poor patient compliance. If all entities can agree on the best recommendations to give patients about lens case cleaning techniques, there may be an increase in patient compliance and a decrease is case-related ocular complications.