If you wear contact lenses, you’ve probably been warned by your eye doctor during a vision exam to be careful about contracting eye infections. Contact lens wearers are particularly vulnerable to pink eye. Vision City of Lake Worth, TX, is here to help you know how to prevent and treat pink eye.
Wash Your Hands
Pink eye is caused by bacteria that live in fecal matter. This bacteria gets on a person’s hands after using the restroom, changing a child’s diaper, or touching a dirty surface in a public area. Most people contract the disease by touching their eyes after getting pink eye bacteria on their hands. Contact lens wearers can also contract pink eye by putting in their lenses before washing their hands. This transfers the bacteria from their hands directly to an object that is resting on their eye.
Reinfection
Once the eye is infected, the irritation caused by the disease makes wearing contact lenses incredibly painful. Most people will automatically choose to wear their eyeglasses for a few days while they treat their eye infections.
An optometrist can diagnose the disease and give you a prescription for eye drops to treat it. Once the infection clears, you must use a new pair of contact lenses and throw the old ones away. Contact lenses with pink eye bacteria cannot be cleaned; they must be thrown away.
While this can be inconvenient, especially if you recently started wearing a new pair of lenses before contracting the disease, you must use a new pair. It is highly likely to become re-infected with this bacteria if you don’t throw away your infected pair of contact lenses.
Call Us Today
If you live in Lake Worth, TX, or the surrounding area and have contracted an eye infection, call Vision City of Lake Worth today at (817) 546-9000. Our skilled optometrist can diagnose your condition during an eye exam and give you the tools you need to treat it.