Tag Archives: lenses

For Lenses, it’s Showtime!

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Vision Expo West (VEW) in Las Vegas, scheduled for September 26 through 29, offers ECPs from all over the world an opportunity to learn, network and, okay, have a little fun.

However, meetings like the two annual Vision Expos also provide manufacturers and suppliers with a platform for introducing new products. Notably, some of the most important recent releases have been in the spectacle lens market.

While it’s true the new lens offerings that debuted at Vision Expo East (VEE) in the New York last spring lacked the fanfare of, say, the first freeform lenses or, going back a bit, the initial launches in progressives and photochromics, they were no less impactful in terms of increasing the options you can provide your patients and/or clients. And, more importantly, they also make significant inroads in enhancing how eyeglass wearers see, and their overall visual comfort.

Take for example Essilor’s decision to offer blue light protection on all of its lens products going forward, via a new coating (see cover story). The new treatment, called Essential Blue, filters three times as much harmful blue light as a conventional clear lens, the company reports. It meets the needs of today’s eyeglass wearers, and their growing use of digital devices (which emit blue light), by filtering out harmful rays (415 to 455 nanometers) while allowing in rays that are beneficial to eye health (465 to 495 nanometers).

Zeiss, meanwhile, used the New York show to launch UVProtect, a lens treatment it describes as the first-ever complete sunglass-level ultraviolet (UV) coating available for clear, organic eyeglass lens materials. The company will now be offering this UV protection (up to 400 nanometers) on all its lens designs and materials. This is notable because, according to Zeiss, most clear spectacle lenses protect against 380 nanometers (UV380) of UV, leaving eyeglass-wearers exposed to as much as 40 per cent of the most harmful rays. This exposure has been linked with photoaging, cancer and cataracts.

Staying on the theme of eye protection, Vision Ease and Younger both made significant additions to their polarized sun lens lines during VEE. Vision Ease has expanded its Coppertone Polarized Lenses line with new offerings in PPG’s Trivex material. Of note, Coppertone Trivex lenses block 100 per cent of UVA and UVB rays, and also filter blue light.

Younger’s launch in New York is called NuPolar ® Infinite GreyTM. According to the company, the new lens is designed to combine its “award-winning” NuPolar polarization technology with state-of-the-art photochromics, creating an “adaptable” corrective sun lens. The new product was developed in response to complaints from prescription eyeglass wearers that their sun lenses were, “either too light or too dark, typically at the wrong times,” according to Younger. In their lightest state, NuPolar® Infinite GreyTM lenses allow for 35 per cent light transmittance, compared to only nine per cent at their darkest state.

VEW in Las Vegas will likely see more new products brought to market. How these new innovations can and will be used in individual optical practices remains to be seen, but new technology generally brings with it new opportunities to meet the ever-increasing expectations of eyeglass wearers.

By Brian P. Dunleavy

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Can You Talk Technology?

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Can You Talk Technology?
By Brian P. Dunleavy

Optical shop owner Steven Levy believes he has an advantage when it comes to understanding lens technology. His three-location business inToronto—LF Optical and LF Warehouse – began as an eyeglass-processing laboratory.

“The LF in the name originally meant ‘Lenses First,” he explains.

Even so, it hasn’t been easy for Levy and his staff of seven opticians to stay up-to-date on the latest in spectacle lens design. “Think about how it is when you buy a TV now,” notes Levy, who is not an optical practitioner but has been in the business for more than 20 years. “Three months later, if you walk up to the counter in the store with the same TV, the clerk laughs at you. It’s almost the same way with lens technology.”

Indeed, the past decade has seen a baffling array of technical enhancements in eyeglass lenses, from free-form progressives to digital single-vision. Keeping current can be a full-time job and it doesn’t help that lenses often take a backseat in optical shops to high-fashion frames, or that optometrists have taken an increasing interest in ocular biology and disease.

“Your garden-variety optometrist has not kept up well with new lens technology,” says Dr. B. Ralph Chou, MSc, OD, FAAO, an associate professor in the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo and a practicing optometrist for more than 30 years.

Adds Madelaine Petrin, RO, an optician and professor in the opticianry program at Toronto’s Seneca College, “Our graduates know the latest lens technologies. For how long? That depends on where they work.”

Educators like Petrin and Chou feel strongly that eyecare practitioners – be they opticians in optical shops or optometrists with optical retail businesses in their practices – must improve their working knowledge of optics technology to ensure they offer their patients and customers the best eyeglass products available. According to Dr. Chou, studies have found that 50 to 60 per cent of optometrists’ income is derived from eyeglass sales, so they, “need to know how to hang glass because that’s where the money is.”

“Without a doubt, patients are more concerned about the ‘label’ on their frames than the actual lenses they house – or at least they are when they enter our clinics,” adds Dr. Alan R. Boyco, OD, owner of Image Optometry, a 14-location chain of optometry clinics in B.C. “But we’ve learned over the years that while a designer frame will elicit a lot of compliments for the patient, a ‘designer’ lens will generate a lot of new patients for our clinics.”

So how can eyecare practitioners stay informed on new lens technology? Continuing education meetings and courses for both opticians and optometrists are an excellent source of information on eyeglass lens designs. Both Boyco and Levy suggest having those who attend such programs share what they’ve learned with their colleagues in the optical shop or optometry practice through in-office workshops. Similarly, sending shop or practice representatives to local, regional or national conferences can help. Lens manufacturers are usually well represented at such events and more than willing to share information on their products. Once again, attendees can come back with knowledge to share with colleagues. Finally, lens-processing laboratories are also excellent sources of information on lens designs; lab personnel have hands-on knowledge of how new designs affect optics.

Above all, it doesn’t matter how you learn, just that you learn. It can make a difference in how your patients see, and whether they come back to you in the future.

“I want to offer our clients the best products available,” Levy says. “If they leave wearing nice frames, friends will ask, ‘Hey, where did you get those?’ If they leave wearing lenses with good optics, they will see better and tell their friends and family how knowledgeable our staff is. It is just good business.”