Contact lenses and acute exposure to ultraviolet radiation

The eyes of twenty-three pigmented rabbits (weight approximately 2kg) were irradiated with a single dose of UVB (285 to 315 nm total bandpass at approximately 450 muW.cm-2 irradiance) for exposure times of 22s to 1680s. One group wore UV-transmitting soft contact lenses during exposure of one eye with the fellow eye serving as a control while another group wore a UV-absorbing lens on each eye with only one eye irradiated. UV-transmitting contact lenses did not affect the clinical response to UV exposure whereas the UV-absorbing contact lenses protected the corneas as could have been predicted by consideration of the absorption characteristics of the lenses at the experimental waveband. In no case was there any evidence of adhesion between the contact lens and the corneal epithelium.