Vial lenses

Vial contacts are long-lived lenses that you can wear for up to a year, as long as you remove them every night before going to bed. Of course, you need to clean and sterilize them on a daily basis as well. These gas-permeable contacts come as both soft and rigid lenses.

The history of contact lenses dates all the way back to the 17th century, but it took several hundred years before anything came near being of practical use. It is a long story and probably full of irritated eyes, considering that is wasn't until 1971 that the first gas permeable lens came on the market. It allowed the eye to continue "breathing" oxygen — a prerequisite for a comfortable contact lens experience. The first gas permeable lenses were made in a soft material called hydogel, while today there are both soft lenses and hard oxygen permeable vial contact lenses.

Rigid gas permeable contact lenses allow oxygen to the eye while giving the better optical acuity and ease of handling of a hard lens.

At the start of the eighties a number of new inventions were implemented: tinted lenses, extended-wear vial lenses and bifocal lenses.