Blog

When soft contact lenses first came on the scene, the ocular community went wild.

People no longer had to put up with the initial discomfort of hard lenses, and a more frequent replacement schedule surely meant better overall health for the eye, right?

In many cases this was so. The first soft lenses were made of a material called HEMA, a plastic-like polymer that made the lenses very soft and comfortable. The downside to this material was that it didn’t allow very much oxygen to the cornea (significantly less than the hard lenses), which bred a different line of health risks to the eye.

As contact lens companies tried to deal with these new issues, they started to create...

Getting your eyes dilated can be inconvenient – dilation makes your eyes light sensitive, which can make it difficult to read books or use phones and computers for a few 4 hours.

So wouldn’t it be great to have another drop to reverse the effects of dilation?

On Dec. 31, 1990, dapiprazole, under the trade name Rev-Eyes, was approved by the FDA and thought to be the answer to all the post-dilation problems. It was marketed for treatment of medically-induced dilation by stimulating pupillary constriction and restoration of accommodative function for reading.

In clinical practice, dapiprazole took between one to two hours to return pupils to pre-dilation size.

Side effects such as...