CLs that Deliver Anesthesia

CNET reports that "researchers at the University of Florida are working to design contact lenses already helpful in protecting the eyes post-surgery that can extend the release time of anesthesia to help with this post-surgery pain. The trick, chemist Anuj Chauhan and colleagues report in the journal Langmuir, is vitamin E. By adding 'highly hydrophobic' vitamin E aggregates to silicone hydrogel lenses for distribution of three commonly used anesthetics post-surgery, they found that the aggregates acted as barriers; by not interacting so readily with water on the surface of the eye, this barrier was able to extend the release time of the anesthetics from just a few hours to multiple days." Read more.