Anniversary of a Revolution

25 Years of Soft Contact Lenses in the U.S.

BY JOSEPH T. BARR, O.D., M.S., Editor
MAR. 1996

About 10 years prior to Bausch & Lomb's introduction of the soft contact lens to the United States (March 1971), Wichterle and Lim developed the hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) hydrogel material in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. I'm told by Sheldon Wechsler that Wichterle envisioned distributing dry lenses on strips of paper -- yes, disposables! Whether you believe that Feldman, Hornstein, Morrison, Pollak or Isen was most responsible for getting the soft contact lens from Europe to the United States, (see "The Soft Lens Story" by Patty Sposato and Neal Bailey, July 1987) it was B&L who took the risk and got the device (regulated as a drug) approved 25 years ago this month.

Bob Mandell has said that the introduction of the soft lens was the only revolution in the contact lens field since the introduction of the corneal PMMA lens. He is correct. Bill Boyts, National Sales Manager for B&L when Soflens was introduced, recalls how they launched the Soflens in Portland and Seattle to practitioners with the first ever Madison Avenue pitch in this industry. The sales representatives (the best ones were from the computer industry) learned about the product during these practitioner training sessions. He also recalls the first corneal ulcer in the first year of promoting the lens. Yet there was no stopping it as television repeatedly covered the story providing much free advertising for B&L, resulting in a run-up of its stock. Then, as now, most practitioners got involved with a new product to stay competitive, not because they were thrilled with the product itself despite reports of the dramatically improved comfort of a soft lens.

I recall many of these events from when I was an optometry student in 1973. In those days we could memorize the entire alphabet soup of B&L series lenses (BFJNC) and all the base curves and diameters of the Hydrocurve and other early lenses. Now it's hard to remember every manufacturer's name.

It's clear why so many of us who have prescribed soft lenses in the past 25 years can say "soft contact lenses have been very, very good to my patients and to me." CLS