Cleaning efficacy of single-purpose surfactant cleaners and multi-purpose solutions.

The initial stages of contact lens spoilation are rapid with respect to the deposition of tear components, in particular, lipids and proteins. In addition, extrinsic factors such as care solutions, cosmetics, skin lipids, drugs and tobacco smoke may all play an important part in the spoilation process. Care systems have different effects on this spoilation. Assessment of the relative cleaning efficacies of the single purpose and multipurpose cleaners which are now available in the UK (e.g. ReNu, Optifree, Complete), is of importance in understanding progressive contact lens-tear interactions. This paper furthers our understanding of the efficacies of these solutions in removing the deposition of tear components from the contact lens.