Habits of contact lens wearers toward lens care in Malaysia

Abstract

The purpose to do this research was to find out the habits of contact lens wearers towards lens care in this country, and to evaluate the compliance of contact lens wearers.

Methods: All respondents underwent an interview regarding questionnaire which was carried out at the Klang Valley and Sabah, Malaysia by trained bilingual optometrists. The questionnaire was obtained from a study by Yvonne Wu et al., 2010. The questionnaire included information about respondents' demographics, contact lens hygiene behaviors and attitudes toward lens care. Comparison between groups and certain factors of lens care were analyzed.

Results: Within the 100 respondents, 74% were female. The majority used monthly disposable lens (53%, 53/100), 35% (35/100) wore daily lens, 3% (3/100) wore biweekly disposable lens, 8% (8/100) wore quarter-yearly (3 months) lens, and only a participant (1%) used conventional lenses. The major non-compliance aspect that found out from this research were poor lens case (46%), inadequate cleaning of lens before storing (38%) and wearers not remembering how often they were advised to return for an aftercare (24%).

Conclusion: The poor lens care hygiene, inadequate cleaning of lens before storing may due to lack of proper advice to the contact lens wearers during examination or lack of awareness of aftercare visit.