How to Remove a Soft Contact Lens

Soft lenses are made of flexible plastics great for an active lifestyle, but they require a constant cleaning or replacement. Follow these steps to remove your contact lenses and have them cleaned.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• The directions that come with your lenses
• Water
• Saline Solution
• Soap
• Soft towel

1. Follow and save the directions that come with your lenses. Request literature from your eye-care practitioner about caring for contact lenses.
2. Be exact in following the directions that come with each lens-care product. If you have questions, ask your eye-care practitioner or pharmacist.
3. Wash and rinse your hands before handling lenses. Fragrance-free soap is best.
4. Use 2 or 3 drops of your saline solution or your lubricating/rewetting drops in each eye 10 minutes before removing a soft contact lens. This will hydrate the lens so that it's not dry when you remove it.
5. Work over a table with a soft towel covering the top. If you work over a sink, close the drain and use a washcloth to cover the drain area.
6. Take out the right lens first, then the left, always.
7. Look up, touch the lens, and let it slide down and over to the outside corner of the eye. The lens will bunch up, so it's easy to fold out with your fingertips and grab out of your eye.
8. To remove a lens that you cannot get out with your fingertips, miniature suction cups are available at most pharmacies. These are recommended mostly with hard contact lenses, although the cups could be useful with soft lenses too.
9. Don't worry about a contact lens being lost in your eye; it can't happen. If it slides under your eyelid or becomes displaced, try looking in the opposite direction of where the lens is and nudge it with your finger on your lid, towards the pupil of your eye.

Tips & Warnings

• Gas-permeable contact lenses are much simpler to insert than soft contact lenses, but for some, more difficult to remove. Because they don't fold, you can't really grab them with your fingertips.
• Consider a thicker contact lens if thinner lenses (disposable and extended-wear lenses) are more difficult for you to handle. It's often hard to tell if they have folded inside out.
• Clean, rinse and disinfect reusable lenses each time you remove them, even if this is several times a day.
• Clean, rinse and air-dry the lens case each time you remove the lenses. Then put in fresh solution. Replace the lens case every 6 months.
• Get your eye-care practitioner's OK before taking medicines or using topical eye products, even those you buy without a prescription.
• The risk of corneal ulcers for people who keep extended-wear lenses in overnight is 10 to 15 times greater than for those who use daily-wear lenses only while awake.
• Remember that the great majority of problems with contact lenses are due to improper cleaning, handling or wearing schedules.
• If the lenses should ever chip or crack, don't wear them.