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The lenses Council reports that 26 million Americans wear contact. Among lenses wearers, approximately 80% wear the soft type and 18% wear rigid gas-permeable lenses. The Council reports that about 11% of lenses wearers, approximately 2.8 million people, are under 18.InfantsThere contactschoice are few instances when corrective lenses--lenseses or contacts--are prescribed for infants. However, when an infant develops cataracts , a condition known as infantile aphakia, contact may be prescribed following surgery. contactschoice In 1993, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that contact were safe and effective for use with infants following cataract surgery. Routine care of the lenses was easily learned by the baby''s parents or caregivers. One, he didn''t think contactschoice they were available from any other source," "and two, he had heard they weren''t as highly controlled as those dispensed through doctors."Neither assertion is true. got on the Internet and found her lenses on several Web sites for $35.95 for a box of six pairs. (Her doctor was charging $50 contactschoice a box.) says her doctor told her that lenses offered by places like may have failed manufacturers'' quality checks. Bausch contacts and other lensmakers say there''s no difference in quality between the lenses sold through doctors and those sold directly to consumers. STATES CRACK DOWN. Attorneys general in 32 states have sued the American Optometric Association and two of the top contact-lens manufacturers (Vistakon, a division of contacts, and Bausch), alleging that the AOA tried to get manufacturers to agree to selllenses only through optometrists or other eye-care professionals. The attorneys general say they also have evidence that doctors agreed to withhold prescriptions from people who sought to buy lenses from other sources, despite the fact that at least 22 states have laws requiring eye doctors to give out contact-lens prescriptions upon request.Although the AOA says patients should be able to buy their lenses anywhere, the organization has reservations about mail-order contactschoice purchases. "The difficulty when someone goes through mail order is that they don''t come back for regular checkups," says AOA president Dr. Harvey Hanlen. lensesesOver 140 million people in the United States wear lenseses. People whose eyes have refractive errors do not see clearly without glasses, because the light emitted from the objects they are observing does not come into focus on their retinas. For people who are farsighted, images come into focus behind the retina; for people who are nearsighted, images come into focus in front of the retina. Lenses work by changing the direction of light so that images come into focus contactschoice on the retina. The greater the index of refraction of the lens material and contactschoice the greater the difference in the curvature between the two surfaces of the lens, the greater the change in direction of light that passes through it, and the greater the correction.Lenses can be unifocal, with one correction for all distances, or they can be correct for more than one distance (multifocal). One type of multifocal, the bifocal, has an area of the lens (usually at the contactschoice bottom) that corrects for nearby objects (about 14 in from the eyes); the remainder of the lens corrects for distant objects (about 20 ft from the eyes).
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