Soft Contact Lenses(SCL) are used widely instead of glasses among young female, especially university students, for cosmetic purpose. Usually Shirmer test has been used to evaluate the tear production state however more objective method is the tear film break up time. Authors evaluated the effect of soft contact lenses on BUT. We selected 40 femalse wearing on Hyper-Thin soft contact lenses, and One Soflens(Baush and Lomb) as soft contact lens wearing group and 30 females without no evidence of systemic disease or ocular disease affecting on tear production as normal control group. And authors studied mean value of BUT at each group, difference of BUT between 2 groups and finally evaluated the BUT change accord ing to duration of wearing. The results were as follows. 1. The mean value of tear film break up time(BUT) was 8.64 +/- 3.91 seconds and 11.12 +/- 4.94 seconds in soft contact lens wearing group and normal control group respectively. 2. There was a statistically significant difference of BUT between each group(P<0.05). 3. There was statistically significant difference of BUT between more than 4 years of soft contact lens wearing group and less than 3 years of wearing gorup(P<0.05).
Contact Lenses, Hydrophilic* ; Eyeglasses ; Female ; Glass ; Humans ; Tears*