While travelling in Europe, I noticed the scarcity of soft CL care
products.  Most noticable was the absence of saline which I use in large
quantities for rinsing lenses.

What do Europeans and their OD's do?  The s.m.v FAQ refers to an old
article and mentions the dangers of acanthamoebae.

Specifically, do they use tap water? Or make saline from distilled/demin
water plus ~0.8% salt?  Which is safer?  Does it depend on the
disinfection system (Europeans seem to use more peroxide (CIBA AOSept)
while biguadanine at ppm levels is more popular here)?

Hi Robert,

I think in germany few people save saline and use tap water instead. I
always tell customers not to do so and as much as I know none of my
customers does.
Normally they use Aosept, of which I think it is a great solution for
desinfection of soft contacts, sometimes in combination with Ciba's
miraflow a an additional surface cleaner and Softwear Saline which I
prefere because it's without conservation media.

Most standard soft contacts are cleaned with this composition and I've
made good experiences with it.

You should know that many germans use RGP-Lenses, about 10 per cent of
all CL-wearers. Many of them are CAB-lenses and many customers use tap
water after surface-cleaning them.
I don't like this behavior but I can understand my customers for
CL-solutions are very expensive in germany, i.e a bottle (360 ml) of
Softwear saline costs 13 Marks which is about 9 Dollars!

Where have You been in Europe? Maybe the behavior of customers differs
very much from country to country.

greetings
Werner