“How often do I need to clean my contact lenses?”

You should clean your lenses daily to avoid infection.

Daily and never sleep in them!

If you are not wearing daily disposable contact lenses, you should be removing and cleaning your contact lenses daily in order to best avoid infection. Your tears contain proteins, which serve as scaffolding for bacteria if they allowed to build up on the lenses. Yes, clean daily.

Scott Greenbaum, MD

Yes, daily removal and disinfection overnight are crucial to healthy contact lens use. Also, replace the lenses on schedule, usually every 2-4 weeks depending on the brand. Modern contact lenses are designed to be discarded frequently to prevent build-up of deposits that cause allergy, blurred vision, and poor fit.

Mark F. Pyfer, MD

It is safest to clean and store them daily. Add that to your evening routine and it only takes a couple of minutes. You don't want to get an eye infection.

Your tears have proteins, lipids, and a variety of normal bacteria in them at all times. Contact lenses get build up of these normal materials on them. Over time, they can become concentrated on the contacts that haven’t been cleaned regularly and cause blurred vision, discomfort, and a source for infection. Rubbing the lenses after you take them out at night breaks off the deposits and allows the cleaning solutions to kill bacteria over night. Without rubbing them with the solution, you leave areas of build up where bacteria can hide and create protective biofilms that are difficult to remove. If you don’t want the hassle of the extra 30 seconds it takes to clean the lenses, have your doctor switch you to daily disposable contacts and throw them in the recycling bin at the end of the day. Multipurpose cleaning solutions that say that they are No Rub solutions require you to spray the lenses for at least 15 seconds (which is a giant waste of solution). Just put a small puddle in the palm of your hand over the contact and rub it as you were instructed. This will save you $ and protect you from a nasty corneal ulcer and painful infiltrates. Putting the same lens on your eye is like eating with the same spoon every day, dumping it in soapy water, letting it sit all night, pulling it out without cleaning it, and eating again. It will get a little clean by being in the soapy water, but would be spotless if you took the time to actually wash it. Clean your lenses every day.

You definitely need to properly clean your contact lenses everyday with a multipurpose cleaning and disinfecting solution to prevent from developing possible eye infections that could lead to loss in vision. You should also remember to clean your contact lenses everyday even if you do not wear them everyday. For example, if you are wearing a daily monthly contacts and you decide to skip wearing for a week, you should still clean your contacts for the week that you skipped wearing the monthly contacts.

Clean them daily. No question

Yes, clean your lenses! Do not sleep in them. Digital massage with solution or the peroxide cleanser that has to go for 6 hours.

Every night before going to bed.

Yes. That prevents eye infections from dirty lenses.

I recommend following your doctor's advice and in this case, overnight cleaning is simple, safe, and practical to reduce bacterial growth on your lenses.

Warm Regards,

Dr. Yesnick, OD.