Refitting contact lens dropouts into a modern daily disposable contact lens

Abstract Purpose To determine the number of previous contact lens (CL) wearers who could be comfortably refitted into delefilcon A (DAILIES TOTAL1®) CLs. Methods This was a 6‐month, three‐visit study that recruited subjects who discontinued CLs within the past 2 years because of discomfort or dryness symptoms. Subjects were required to have Standard Patient Evaluation of Eye Dryness (SPEED) questionnaire scores ≤3 and to be able to wear spherical study CLs. Subjects were asked to complete a ±50 comfort visual analogue scale (VAS) at 1 month and a Likert questionnaire after 1 and 6 months of CL wear to understand the subjects' CL experience. Results All 60 subjects who were fitted with the study CLs were still wearing them after 1 month, while one subject had dropped out by 6 months. Subjects had a median (interquartile range) age of 24.0 (7.0) years (71.7% female). They reported a median VAS score of 44.0 (8.0) units at the 1‐month visit, with all reporting a comfortable score. At the 1‐month/6‐month visits, 98.3%/93.2%, 86.5%/78.0% and 93.2%/91.5% of subjects responded that they were very satisfied or satisfied with their vision, their end‐of‐day CL comfort and overall CL comfort, respectively. The same subjects responded that they were very likely or likely to continue to wear the study CLs at 1 (89.6%) and 6 months (80.7%) and to recommend the study CLs to a friend at 1 (98.3%) and 6 months (93.2%). Conclusions The results suggest that when encountering a CL dropout, a practitioner could educate a patient about trying an alternative CL and consider delefilcon A lenses as an option.