How do you put contact lenses in?

Where? Clean place with clean level area, sink and mirror

With what? Hand and face cleanser, lint free towel, contact lens.

Allow yourself plenty of time to put the contact lens on your eye, especially when you are new to doing so. It does, like all things, get easier and quicker with practice, but there are no short cuts either. 

1. Thoroughly wash and dry your face and hands using a lint free towel. Lint caught under the contact can be very annoying.
2. Place the contact lens container on a clean dry place
3. Carefully open the contact lens container and remove the contact lens from the container using the clean pad of your index finger – right for right handers and vice versa.
4. Use your other hand to pick up the contact lens from your index finger, turn the lens over, sit it back on the index, so the lens is now sitting on your finger on the apex of the lens’s curve ie “bowl pointing away from your finger”
5. Looking in the mirror, or lying on a bed, use the third finger of the same hand to draw down your lower eyelid, and place the contact lens on the correct eye, as you look into the very tip of the index finger placing the lens. 
6. As you withdraw your index finger away from your eye again, you will be able to tell if the contact lens has adhered to your eye by the change in focus. 

Notes:

• Getting the lens to stay on your finger whilst you transfer it to your eye, and then transfer from  your finger to your eye, is a balance in surface tension between your finger and your eye. Sometimes a small drop of the contact lens container fluid inside the “bowl” of the contact lens will assist. Too big a drop makes the contact lens weigh too much, and it too easily falls off your finger before the contact reaches your eye. It’s a balance you soon get the feel of. 
• If the contact does fall on a wet surface or a dirty surface, throw the contact lens away. You do not want to put a dirty or contaminated lens on your eye. Its not worth the risk of an infection on the front of your eye which can be quite uncomfortable and take time, money and inconvenience, and may result in scarring or irregularity on the front of your eye and consequent loss of vision, even with glasses. 
• Never lick a contact and put it in your eye. There is a very high risk of eye infection and people have become almost blind this way. 
• Be particularly careful around wet areas such as sinks, showers, baths etc. A bacteria called Pseudomonas loves to grow in such areas. Eye infections from contact lens contamination with Pseudomonas (1, 2) can be extremely serious and sight threatening. Don’t risk it if you think your lens has been contaminated with water from these areas. Don’t put that contact in your eye. Get a new clean lens and start again or disinfect the contact lens again.
• If there is a mild irritation after inserting the lens, and it does not improve with a few blinks, a few drops of any artificial tear may rinse out any small irritant from near or under your contact. 
• If the irritation persists, try another new lens. 

• After successfully placing a contact lens on your eye, it may take up to a minute or two for the lens to settle on your eye to attain your best vision with the contact lens. 

   

• 1. Alex Lap-Ki Ng 1, Kelvin Kai-Wang To 2, Chile Chi-Lai Choi 1, Leonard Hsu Yuen 3, Suk-Ming Yim 3, Keith Shun-Kit Chan 3, Jimmy Shiu-Ming Lai 1, Ian Yat-Hin Wong 1 Predisposing Factors, Microbial Characteristics, and Clinical Outcome of Microbial Keratitis in a Tertiary Centre in Hong Kong: A 10-Year Experience J Ophthalmol 2015:2015:769436.
• 2. JDavid T Truong    Minh-Thuy Bui  Pauras Memon  H Dwight Cavanagh  Microbial Keratitis at an Urban Public Hospital: A 10-Year Update  Clin Exp Ophthalmol 2015 Dec;6(6):498.