Meeting Lens Technology Challenges

Welcome to our continuing series of Credit Educations Courses for Opticians.

This course has been approved for one hour of credit by the American Board of Opticianry. No fee is required for ABO credit.

Learning Outcomes: At the conclusion of this credit education course, participants should be able to:

1. Explain features and benefits of several of today's premium lens products.

2.Foster in-depth education on premium lens products with both patients and colleagues.

3. Know how to properly process premium lens products.

4.Be able to plan a business strategy with fitting and dispensing techniques and future premium product knowledge.

Test procedures: Read the article and then click on the "Take The Test" button at the bottom of the page. This will open a new window with a test consisting of 20 questions. To receive ABO continuing education credit, respondents must correctly answer 16 of 20 test questions. Simply click on the best answer for each question and click the submit button at the end of the test. Your test answers will be automatically sent to Seiko Optical and we will send your CEC or notify you of test failure within 7 to 10 business days.

Note: Some states do not accept home study courses for continuing education credit. Check with the licensing board in your state to see if this course qualifies.

One thing is for certain about the spectacle lens marketplace: It continues to grow at a rapid pace. Advances in anti-reflective lenses, the rollout and advance of freeform produced lenses, and the evolving high-index lens segment mean that eyecare professionals and their patients have options in premium lenses that they've never had before.

AR Fitting

The average light transmittance of AR is 98.1 percent. In addition to improved cosmetics, AR lenses can reduce eyestrain and offer safer night driving, as well as allow 65 percent improved image contrast in low light situations. Frontside and backside AR is the best reflection-cutter and vision-enhancer for tinted sunwear, so recommend AR on the front and back of tinted sunlenses for the best performance.

Today's ARs are tougher than ever, but aren't invincible. Inform patients to keep their AR lenses away from industrial chemicals and domestic chemicals like hair spray and to clean lenses at least once a day with an approved AR cleaner, and wipe lenses with an AR-approved cloth for touch-ups.

Most premium AR lenses are backed up with a manufacturer's warranty, generally for two years. Be sure you know all the nuances of any warranty and have it in writing. Then you can choose to offer the warranty regularly as a perk for patients or keep the knowledge internally and use it when necessary.

There are still a bevy of consumers who have never heard of AR and who have never worn AR. One study conducted by a major lens manufacturer showed that 90 percent of patients who didn't receive AR were never presented with AR. Educating every patient on the features and benefits of AR is a necessity to reach not only this demographic, but those who have worn AR successfully or unsuccessfully in the past, since AR today offers upgraded performance.

While AR can benefit most patients, start by presenting AR for better acuity on high-index and polycarbonate lenses, for night driving, computer viewing, and low vision patients. Ramp up to recommending AR for kids and senior citizens, who can both reap visual clarity benefits and enjoy the easy cleaning and easy care of premium AR. The final step: Recommend AR for everyone.

Combine a simple explanation of AR features and its benefits-better visual acuity and cosmetic appearance-with a demonstration of an AR and non-AR lens. A reflective demonstrator is also a powerful patient persuader, such as one that shows a night driving scene with and without AR. Check with manufacturers for the AR tools they have available, including in-office materials, mailers, point-of-purchase items, patient take-home materials, and demonstration units.

Freeform Created lenses

Freeform is a digitalized, computerized, advanced lab process that yields complex, precisely produced lenses. Currently, the most utilized freeform-created lenses are personalized progressive addition lenses (PALs). While each personalized PAL design sports its own unique characteristics and fitting techniques, there are some generalities when it comes to recommending, educating, and dispensing.

In addition to patented freeform design, freeform created PALs use aspheric and/or atoric curves to enhance vision in all zones, plus flatten and slim the lenses.

Recently, wavefront technology has been used to measure and develop individualized aspheric surfaces based on patient visual requirements across the entire power range with both contact lenses and spectacle lenses. Points of light identify normal corrections and higher order aberration corrections that are needed. The resulting custom-made lenses, based on electronic and digitally provided data, are truly one-of-a-kind.

Experts in optical manufacturing, wholesale laboratories, at schools and colleges, and eyecare practitioners predict that freeform produced lenses will be the standard lens choice within the next 10 years.

Fitting Freeform

In addition to one-of-a-kind design, personalized PALs offer many other practical "look good, see good" points. Since freeform-created lenses adapt to patients' visual habits rather than patients having to adapt to non-customized lens parameters, patient acceptance and success with personalized PALs is almost assured. This includes first-time wearers and those who were unsuccessful with traditionally created PAL designs. With recommended fitting heights in the mid-teens, personalized PALs can be fitted in most of today's small fashion frames and rimless mountings.

Some freeform-created PALs don't require specific fitting and dispensing skills other than basic PAL measurements, such as taking monocular pupillary distance (PD) with a digital pupilometer and marking optical centers (OC) and segment heights. Other personalized PALs are calculated by using specialized measuring tools and techniques from the manufacturer. Visual field expansion for all distances and larger and wider intermediate zones-made possible with internal freeform processing-helps reduce peripheral PAL blur and visual swim.

High-index

Thanks in part to high-performance AR products, plastic material high-index lenses are poised to take more of a marketplace share. Today, high-index lenses are considered to be any lens over a 1.60 index of refraction (see Index Identity sidebar). High-index lenses are available in single-vision, multifocal, and PAL options, and in more index choices than ever before, including 1.67, 1.70, and 1.74.

Mainly, high-index offers high-power Rx wearers a cosmetically appealing and comfortable-to-wear lens. Other high-index lens benefits include aspheric/atoric design, which enhances high-index benefits such as producing lenses that are thinner, flatter, and lighter weight. They also offer less magnification on plus lenses and less minification on minus powers. High-index lenses today offer improved visual acuity through advanced design. Improved hard coatings for greater scratch protection and easy cleaning, with advanced ydrophobic/oleophobic anti-reflective properties help lenses perform to the maximum.

Today's high-index lenses also offer water white clarity, coatings that allow consistent tinting results, true 1.0 center thickness with tight tolerance standards, and wider prescription ranges, especially in minus Rxs.
Several manufacturers high-index designs offer honed fitting techniques for ease of dispensing and better wearer visual satisfaction. For example, one balanced design takes pantoscopic tilt and object distance into account, and another design features a spherical fitting button.

Glass high-index lenses are also available up to a 1.90 index, although not as popular in the U.S. as plastic high-index lenses.

Glass high-index lenses are typically higher priced with slower turnaround time, and heavier in weight. Advantages in glass high-index include superior optics and AR adhesion with natural scratch-resistance. In addition, a waiver is required for glass high-index lenses because they do not meet impact-resistant standards.

Fitting High-index

High-index lenses should be highly considered for a patient with an Rx of -3.00D and higher. Several eyecare professionals fit patients with an Rx of over -2.25D and up in high-index, and some ECPs fit patients with an average Rx in high-index, since in this case AR high-index lenses virtually disappear, creating the ultimate cosmetic effect.

High-index lenses can work well in rimless frames, especially those created with rimless in mind, like 1.67 lenses. Advanced 1.67 lens material (MR-10) is less heat sensitive and therefore ideal for rimless drill mounting. 1.67 lenses also exhibit better flexural and tensile strength than polycarbonate, which is important for the high-index rimless patient, because it allows finished eyewear to be increasingly durable.

Remember that denser high-index material reduces the amount of light passing through lenses, and that AR is a virtual necessity with high-index for the best visual performance as well as wearer comfort.

When converting a patient from a conventional index lens to a high-index lens, remember that different lens material and curvature than what the patient is wearing may end up requiring an adjustment period.
Keep high-index lens literature, point-of-purchase materials, and lens demonstrators on-hand at all times. Showcase at least two different hands-on displays that demonstrates matching Rx powers in standard plastic versus various high-index products.

Manufacturers can offer several samples, and most wholesale laboratories will fabricate custom demonstrators to order. Lens centers and lens kits are usually available from manufacturers, labs, and professional organizations.

AR Future

Premium AR is already a primary factor in industry and patient acceptance and the categories growth. That said, AR is poised to continue a technology boom. Experts predict that within 10 years or less:

1. More new AR equipment will be available from a variety of manufacturers. Automation will be key, including units that process lenses from start to finish and include AR.

2. Smaller and affordable AR equipment will be available for mid-size and smaller labs and optical retailers.

3. Hydrophobic/oleophobic AR lenses will be edged more easily and will become the industry standard.

4. Scratch resistance will improve.

5. Premium-based AR products will drive the marketplace, however, a variety of choices will be available.

6. Turnaround time on AR work will speed up, including overnight delivery of a complete product including AR.

7. Substrate-matching hard coatings and AR will become a large part of AR success.

8. AR lenses will routinely be fabricated at one location and shipped to the ECP with the entire transaction being handled via the Internet.

9. Coatings may become an integral part of the lens rather than part of the optical surface of a lens.

10. Coatings may change colors, lighten and darken, and even self-clean.

11. There will be a cost drop for both wholesale and retail channels as AR becomes mainstream.

12. AR will be the majority of all lenses sold.

This concludes the article. Click the button below to take the test.