oxygen to cornea with goggles?

[Pinky]

Hi Dr. Latkany,
I just started wearing goggles at night and plan on buying moisture chamber glasses. A friend asked me if the air tight eyewear might cause problems by rpreventing oxygen getting to the cornea. I wasn't sure if this mattered at night as our eyes are shut. But he said that because the eyelid is so thin it may be quite permeable and still allow oxygen in. Anyway, I though he raised some good questions and was wondering your thoughts.

[Robert Latkany MD]

Pinky,

Interesting question. You may need to ask Suzanne this one who is the inventor of ther product at eyeeco. No oxygen is of course a bad thing but does oxygen actually penetrate the eyelid to get to the surface I am not sure. Especially if you do not have lagophthalmos. Obviously if you do have lagophthalmos it easily gets to the surface. I have never seen a "toxic" reaction from suffocation with the goggles and I am going to guess we never will. But I will admit I have been stumped on this one. Good job.

Dr L

[Rebecca Petris]

Sorry to jump in here, but I am wondering if Pinky is talking about airtight swim goggles, as I think Dr. Latkany is referring to the tranquileyes sleep goggle.

[Pinky]

I'm referring to the tranquil eyes goggles which I thought were air tight and also mositure chamber glasses that people wear during the day, which I also thought were air tight.

[Rebecca Petris]

Sorry about that, I misunderstood.

Tranquileyes is not airtight. I will try and get more information from Suzanne about this though.

Panoptx 'moisture chamber' wraparounds are not airtight either. They have a patented vented 'orbital seal'.

The only airtight eyewear I can think of that dry eye patients ever wear is swim goggles.

[Pinky]

Thanks for the reply Rebecca,
I just started looking onto the moisture chamber glasses and thought that only some of them came with vents because people were compaining about the fogging effect. I guess the question for the manufacturers is, do their eyecare products allow enough oxygen in to be considered safe?

[Rebecca Petris]

In my personal experience fogging is often directly related to fit. However, there are some circumstances where no matter what the fit, the lenses will sometimes fog. Used to happen to me in Florida... jogging on a very humid day, or walking out of a 65 degree air conditioned grocery store in July while wearing them.

The Orbital Seal in Panoptx eyewear is a vented eyecup, so any Panoptx models with the orbital seal (Velocity CV and FX models, i.e. all Panoptx models in the dry eye shop) by definition are vented.

Like I said, I would think that only eyewear that is watertight would pose any concerns about also being airtight, but I'll ask Panoptx and Eye Eco and see what they say.

[Robert Latkany MD]

I will defer this one to the companies as it is an interesting question but doubt there is any danger present. I have never seen anything that would suggest oxygen deprivation. I have been using both for a few years now.