• Diego García-Ayuso, Miguel Escámez-Torrecilla, Caridad Galindo-Romero, Francisco J Valiente-Soriano, Esmeralda Moya-Rodríguez, Paloma Sobrado-Calvo, and Johnny Di Pierdomenico.
• Departamento de Oftalmología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Murcia, Spain; Instituto Murciano de Investigación Biosanitaria Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca (IMIB-Virgen de la Arrixaca), Murcia, Spain; Facultad de Óptica y Optometría, Universidad de Murcia, Spain. Electronic address: diegogarcia@um.es.
• Cont Lens Anterior Eye. 2021 Jun 1; 44 (3): 101351.

PurposeTo investigate the behaviour of contact lens (CL) wearers in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsAn anonymized web-based questionnaire was used to assess demographics, CL history, and activity, CL wear habits and perceived risk of infection due to CL wear during the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsA total of 737 participants with an average age of 27.4 (±9.3) years completed the online questionnaire. The vast majority of respondents were soft CL wearers and reported at least two years of CL wear. Patients concerns about the increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection due to CL wear (40.6 % of participants) were significantly related (χ2(1) = 11.195, p < 0.05) to CL discontinuation (46 % of participants) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This fact joins the significant changes in the frequency of CL wear during the COVID-19 pandemic (χ2(4) = 31.982, p < 0.05), with a tendency to increase occasional CL wear from 29.1 % to 61.8 %. Interestingly, the majority of respondent (87.9 %) indicated that no professional had offered them information related to CL wear and COVID-19, and that they had not sought it on their own (82.2 %).ConclusionThere is a relationship between the perceived risk of infection and CL dropout during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a tendency to change the CL frequency of wear, with an increase in occasional CL wear. During the ongoing pandemic, eye care practitioners should reinforce CL patient education to minimize the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and CL-related complications requiring clinical care.Copyright © 2020 British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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