CooperVision, Inc.'s Avaira Toric contact lenses may have caused injury to unaware buyers after the date of a voluntary recall. Lack of widespread notice to the public is being blamed.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration seems ready to take action in the form of a public warning about continued use of the affected lenses. Although the FDA suggested a more broad notification be issued by the company, CooperVision's parent the Cooper Companies, Inc. ("Cooper") chose a more limited approach.
On August 19, 2011 Cooper issued a statement which reads in part:
"CooperVision has initiated a voluntary recall on limited lots of Avaira® Toric contact lenses. This recall is limited solely to specific lots of Avaira Toric, and no other CooperVision product is involved in this recall.
The recall was initiated because of the unintended presence of a residue on certain lenses. The residue was identified after investigating a small number of complaints of temporary hazy vision."
Cooper also posted the information on its website, but limited it to the fact of the recall, providing a way to check if a customer had purchased lenses from the affected lots. It did not include names of the retailers that received shipments of those lots. NBC News'report of the situation claims that Wall-Mart, Costco and Lens Crafters are among the chains that sold the products.
They in turn took the initiative to contact customers to inform them of the recall. The time lag between the August 19 press release and when individuals received notification from their opticians/optometrists seems to have caused some lens wearers to incur injuries that might have been avoided.
NBC has learned that customers without knowledge of the action taken by the company wore the lenses and a dozen have reported serious injuries that go beyond the company's claim of "temporary hazy vision."
While recall notices issued in countries outside the U.S. were broader based and included a list of 200 lots affected by the problems that caused injury, there has yet to be a more public announcement in this country.
In an email to NBC News, Morgan Liscinski an FDA spokesman said, “Absent prompt and adequate communication by CooperVision, the FDA may independently share its concerns about Avaira Toric contact lenses."
Toric lenses are designed for patients who require a correction for astigmatism. Once difficult to impossible to find in the more popular lens materials or as a disposable product, toric lenses are now available in a variety of forms to correct a multitude of vision problems.
The corrective lenses have two powers in them, created with curvatures at different angles (one for astigmatism, the other for either myopia or hyperopia). All About Vision's website explains that they a re built with a mechanism to keep the contact lens relatively stable on the eye when you blink or look around. To provide crisp vision, toric contact lenses cannot rotate on your eye.
Contact lens alert about CooperVision Avaira Toric lenses
