My boyfriend wears contact lenses and has very bad hayfever. He takes tablets daily and uses nose sprays, but his eyes still burn unbearably, like he has rubbed chilli into them. He has several types of drops which ease the symptoms for a few seconds, but don't really provide any longer term relief. There don't seem to be any specific hay fever eye drops that you can use with contact lenses? Why is this? It makes no difference if he leaves the contacts out, his eyes are still sore, so its not the lenses irritating. But having lenses is preventing him from using hayfever drops. Are there any different lenses he can try or drops available? Any advice would be very helpful.
Written answer:
Qualified optometrist Simon Kay BSc(Hons) MCOptom answers this question.
Sorry, I have no good news. Hayfever is a real problem with contact lenses. If your eyes are affected badly you just have to leave them out. Having been a sufferer all my life and seen hundreds of patients with hayfever related eye problems, I have to say that no treatment is very effective. I have personally found eye drops called Alomide the most effective, but you cannot use them with contact lenses. After instillation in the morning, if you wait about 30 minutes you can then insert your lenses. There are no allergy eye drops that I know of that you can use whilst wearing lenses.
