Humidity-conditioned gravimetric method to measure the water content of hydrogel contact lens materials.

A method to determine the humidity-conditioned gravimetric water content of hydrogel contact lens materials has been developed, in which errors due to blotting have been eliminated by conditioning the lens in a series of relative humidity (RH) environments before measuring the water content gravimetrically, and then extrapolating the water content to 100% RH. This method has been used to determine the water contents of representative materials from each of the four FDA lens groups, which were compared with their labeled values, as well as with values obtained from refractive index measurements. The deviation of the water content of soft contact lenses as measured by refractive index from that obtained gravimetrically increased as the water content decreased. The humidity-conditioned gravimetric method to determine water content of hydrophilic contact lenses is being proposed as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard, as an improvement over the gravimetric and refractive index methods.