NYT: Bausch Issues Worldwide Recall of Contact Lens Cleaner Moisture Loc

[DeepModem Mom]

Bausch Issues Worldwide Recall of Contact Lens Cleaner
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Published: May 15, 2006

Bausch & Lomb said today that it had issued a worldwide recall of its ReNu With MoistureLoc soft contact lens cleaner because its testing suggested the product does not consistently protect lens wearers from a potentially blinding fungal infection.

Bausch said its continuing investigations and those of government health authorities provided no basis so far for believing that the problems extend to its other ReNu products. As a result, Bausch will step up its marketing of ReNu MultiUse cleaner and other ReNu-brand lens products, according to Ronald Zarella, the company's chairman and chief executive.

The Food and Drug Administration endorsed Bausch's recall and said that although a thorough review of Bausch's manufacturing plant in Greenville, S.C., had turned up some violations of manufacturing practices that the agency will disclose later this week, none of the infractions appeared to be linked to the problems with MoistureLoc. The infection outbreak, which involves the Fusarium fungus, has for the most part been confined to the United States and several Asian countries that Bausch supplies from Greenville.

While some reports of fungal eye infections have come from users of other products, regulators say MoistureLoc has been the only product where the number of Fusarium cases reported is far higher than might be expected in normal circumstances. As of last Friday, the Centers for Disease Control had reported 122 confirmed Fusarium cases among soft contact lens users since last June, with about two-thirds being linked to MoistureLoc....

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Bausch, which is based in Rochester, N.Y., said it had concluded by early last week that MoistureLoc's formulation might raise the risks of eye infections from the Fusarium fungus when contact lens users follow practices like failing to replace the solution regularly or allowing it to evaporate in the lens case....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/business/15cnd-eye.html

[Hekate]

1. A lot of people are careless w/ their eye care, & advertising doesn't help

There may well be problems with ReNu, and Bausch and Lomb should make it right -- but I wonder about the number of folks who don't take sanitation seriously when it comes to putting things in their eyes.

I've seen people in a hurry actually put their (hard) contacts in their mouths for a quick "wash" -- I knew someone else whose soft contacts welded to her corneas because she didn't take them out for three months.

Corporate advertising makes everything to do with contact lenses sound like you're just putting on another accessory -- "make your brown eyes blue" and all that. I think they should be doing a lot more patient education in the midst of all this sell-sell-selling.

Hekate

[Milspec]

2. Removal from market

This is more than a recall, its a permanent removal from the market for this product. Due to my line of work I check this site every day. I recommend every one to do so at least once a week.

http://www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.html

And Hekate, I've been wearing glasses since High school, never could handel the contact thing, but I have seen a friend do the "Mouthwash" thing with her contacts. I love the girl to death but that just flipped my stomach.

[Hekate]

3. Permanent removal is serious, all right. I was a contact wearer for 36 yrs

I inherited terrible myopia, as did my brother and sister. We had glasses -- boy, did we have glasses.

When I was 21 I bought my first pair of contact lenses and never looked back. "Hard" was all there was back then, but I was highly motivated. And since I had a good idea of what life would be like if I were ever to get an injury that couldn't be corrected with glasses or contacts, I was very careful.

My kids talked me into LASIK surgery a year ago. I wasn't even a good candidate for LASIK until the new WaveFront technology came along recently (and my sister still isn't). Partly because of being middle aged and partly because of what the doctor had to work with, I still have prescription glasses around for reading, computer work, and night driving, but for the first time since I was 8 or 9 years old I am not dependent on glasses or contacts for all of ordinary life.

I guess the point of this ramble is I have a very hard time understanding how anyone can take their vision for granted, at least in the sense of being careless ... and as for Bausch and Lomb or other companies that cause injury through their own carelessness, they must be made to pay for that.

Hekate

[HeeBGBz]

4. I've got a bottle of that in my medicine cabinet

It was a freebie when I got my last box of contacts.