Method for treating ophthalmic lenses

This application claims the benefit of provisional patent application No. 61/012,856 filed Dec. 11, 2007 which is incorporated by reference herein.

This invention provides a method for treating ophthalmic lenses in its package with an organic surface treatment agent.

It is often desired to improve the surface characteristics of an ophthalmic lens. For example, in the case of intraocular lenses, the surfaces of the lenses may be rendered more biocompatible, for the purpose of reducing or eliminating epithelial cell growth on the lens. Also, intraocular lenses are often placed in the eye with an intraocular lens inserter which has surfaces that contact the lens while it is extruded against these surfaces; the lens surfaces may be modified to become more lubricious so as to lower the coefficient of friction for contacting the lens inserted. In the case of contact lenses, the lens surfaces may be made more wettable by tear film or less resistant to protein and/or lipid deposits from tear film, and more comfortable during wear. With respect to silicon-containing lenses, the lens surfaces have a higher tendency to be hydrophobic with lower wettability, so often a surface treatment is desirable to increase the surface wettability is desired. Various methods of changing the surface characteristics of ophthalmic lenses are known that involve attaching a treatment agent to the lens surfaces.

A conventional manner of packaging ophthalmic lenses, especially contact lenses, is in a so-called blister package. Such packages include a recess designed to hold an individual lens, which is typically immersed in a saline packaging solution. The packages are then enclosed and sealed with lidstock, the lidstock conventionally being a metallic laminate that can withstand post-packaging heat sterilization conditions. The packaging solution may include various agents. As one example, because the lens material may tend to stick to itself and to the lens package, packaging solutions for blister packages have sometimes been formulated to reduce or eliminate lens folding and sticking. For this reason, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) has been used in contact lens packaging solutions. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 6,440,366 discloses contact lens packaging solutions comprising polyethylene oxide (PEO)/polypropylene oxide (PPO) block copolymers, especially poloxamers or poloxamines.

Various blister packages are known. Known blister packages include recesses that are concave, recesses that are flat-bottomed, and recesses that are partially concave with a flat bottom. One specific example is a blister package with a flat bottom having four parallel, longitudinal grooves therein, which is used to package various contact lenses sold by Bausch & Lomb Incorporated (Rochester, N.Y., USA), and has the general configuration illustrated in FIG. 7. Other specific examples may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,842,325; 5,722,536; 5,467,868; 2004/0031701; 2004/0004008; 2002/0046958; 6,072,172; 5,143,660; and 6,889,825.

This invention provides of a method of treating an ophthalmic lens in a package, comprising: placing the lens and an aqueous solution in a recess of package, the solution comprising an organic surface treatment agent that attaches to anterior and posterior surfaces of the lens; and sealing the recess of the package with lidstock and sterilizing the package contents; wherein a bottom of the recess includes grooves.

This invention recognized that it may be desirable to effect attachment of the treatment agent to the lens surfaces while the lens is contained in a package, for example, to reduce material handling steps and the accompanying costs associated therewith. And if one employs a solution, containing the treatment agent, that is ophthalmically compatible, this solution may serve as the final packaging solution, and the heat sterilization of the package and its contents can serve to effect chemical attachment of the treatment agent to the lens surfaces.

However, problems were encountered in that the surfaces of the lens were not uniformly coated with the treatment agent, especially the lens surface in contact with the recess bottom. These problems were overcome by employing packages with recesses including grooves in the bottoms thereof, to ensure better flow of the solution around the lens surfaces.