5 Ways Scleral Lenses Can Benefit Athletes
For athletes, game time performance means implementing skill, strength, and speed with total precision while competing. Players must possess perfect reaction time and the ability to make game-winning decisions without a second to spare. It seems like a virtually impossible task to most of us, but professional athletes do it and make it look easy.
Hand/eye coordination, depth perception, and the ability to quickly change focus are skills that athletes depend on. These skills are an athlete’s tools, and they must be reliable to optimize performance. Scleral lenses offer an excellent solution for athletes who need vision correction but have ocular conditions or corneal irregularities that make wearing traditional contact lenses uncomfortable and unpredictable.
These specialized contact lenses benefit athletes in several ways; they enable athletes to keep integral skills sharp and game time ready. Here are five ways scleral lenses benefit athletes:
- Scleral lenses offer total stability. These lenses won’t move when they are worn. Their customized fit means they won’t fall out, regardless of the level of intensity during an activity. This provides a great advantage to athletes who rapidly move their eyes and need to refocus quickly during gameplay.
- Scleral lenses provide superior optics. They provide crisp, clear vision, and significantly reduce glare and light sensitivity.
- Scleral lenses protect eyes against outdoor elements. Environmental conditions such as wind, dust, sand, pollen, or chalk won’t get into the eyes or dry them out. Scleral lenses are designed to constantly hydrate the eye with a cushion of preservative-free saline that exists between the lens and the ocular surface while safeguarding the entire cornea and part of the sclera. Their large diameter lenses keep environmental irritants out.
- Scleral lenses offer a precisely accurate, made-to-measure fit. Unlike hard to fit contact lenses, these lenses deliver maximum comfort compared to traditional contact lenses. Scleral lenses provide an improved quality of life that is unmatched, especially for those living with ocular conditions such as Keratoconus–a disorder that can change the eye’s shape and cause corneal scarring and irregularities. Ocular conditions like Keratoconus can hinder participation in daily activities and make playing sports incredibly challenging. Scleral lenses provide a cutting-edge solution to these challenges.
- Thanks to their innovative design, scleral lenses promote healing of the eye’s ocular surface. They provide the eye with hydration and enough oxygen to stay healthy. Because they protect against outside irritants. They effectively facilitate the healing process after a corneal surgery event or during the recovery from a chemical, burn, or blunt trauma injury.
The growing popularity and recognition of scleral lenses and their numerous advantages over traditional contact lenses have been widely discussed in recent years. Three documented case studies published by the American Academy of Optometry share stories of athletes. Each of them drastically improved their competitive performance once they began wearing scleral lenses after exhausting all other options. In one case, a 37-year-old male, having undergone multiple surgeries to correct an abnormal corneal curvature and retinal detachment in both eyes, was able to play basketball again after believing he never would after being fitted for scleral lenses. Each of these studies led to the same conclusion regarding scleral lens application in sports vision:
“Scleral lenses are a wonderful option for athletes who cannot enjoy their sport anymore due to discomfort and instability with traditional contact lenses. Quality of life is vastly improved when practitioners consider this modality in the management of these patients.”
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For athletes who want to stay on top of their game and give their best performance on the field, on the court, or in the gym, scleral lenses are the most effective solution for vision correction, comfort, stability, protection, hydration, and healing. Their customization makes them unrivaled in the contact lens industry, and patients who wear them agree that they’re worth the investment. Scleral lenses offer the highest level of technology in contact lenses available on the market today. Contact Weston Contact Lens Institute to learn if scleral lenses are right for you!
Testimonial from Daryl, Satisfied Scleral Lens Patient
Getting scleral lenses was made easy by a great doctor and great staff members. My thanks to Shevonne and others who helped train me on how to use the lenses and care for them.