Cooper Cos. of Lake Forest, one of the major contact lens makers, could benefit from recent news linking contact lens cleaning solutions to serious eye infections.
The company’s products include contact lenses that are worn daily and then thrown away, cutting the need for cleaning with solutions.
“I do believe it’s an opportunity to convince more practitioners to look at daily disposables as the best alternative, or a better alternative, for many of their patients,” Chief Executive Tom Bender said during a recent call with analysts and investors.
Bender, who is scheduled to retire later this year, was traveling last week and unavailable for further comment.
Cooper, which also makes women’s surgical products, has yearly sales of about $1 billion. About 85% of sales are from contact lenses, including disposables and those that are cleaned and worn again. It doesn’t break out sales for disposables.
The company has told its salespeople to act as consultants to eye doctors “to help them try to identify, from the patient selection standpoint, the better patients that might be the best candidate for a daily disposable,” Bender said.
Cooper’s daily disposable lineup includes Biomedics, ClearSight and Proclear 1-Day, a new product.
For now, disposable lenses aren’t a large part of the domestic contact lens market, because they can cost a third more than long-term lenses.
Cooper’s figures show that single-use contact lenses make up 10% of the U.S. market, compared with 60% in Asia and 40% in Europe.
There are some 36 million contact lens wearers in the U.S.
Some think the tide may change.
“I think there will be a trend toward daily disposables,” Mark Mullikin, an eye care analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co., told the Associated Press.
Contact lens worries flared up at the end of May when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a preliminary link between increases in Acanthamoeba keratitis, a rare but serious eye infection, and people who used Complete MoisturePlus, a lens solution made by Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc.
Advanced Medical has recalled Complete MoisturePlus. By the end of September, the company plans to bring back a contact lens solution under the Complete name with instructions for users to rub their lenses clean.
Many doctors see rubbing as a more effective way of cleaning than just rinsing lenses with “no rub” solutions.
Last year, Bausch & Lomb Inc., an Advanced Medical acquisition target, permanently recalled its ReNu MoistureLoc solution in the wake of connections to a fungal infection.
Bender defended solution makers in Cooper’s conference call.
“I don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong with these lens care products,” he said.
Bender said he personally believes the infections were related to improper cleaning.
His comments were “pure speculation,” Bender said.
But “there is something strange going on here,” he said. “And I think it just means that practitioners who want to keep patients out of harm’s way, some harm’s way, may put more patients on daily disposables.”
