What is Dry Eye?

What is Dry Eye?

Dry eye can have a major impact on your quality of life. You may find your eyes get tired faster or you have difficulty reading. Not to mention the discomfort of a burning sensation or blurry vision. Understanding dry eye will help you determine the best treatment option. Dry eye occurs when a person doesn't have enough quality tears to lubricate and nourish the eye. Tears reduce eye infections, wash away foreign matter, and keep the eye’s surface smooth and clear. People with dry eyes either do not produce enough tears or their tears are poor quality. It’s a common and often chronic problem, especially in older adults.

Common Symptoms of Dry Eye Disease

Common symptoms are fluctuating vision, sandy or gritty feeling eyes, watery eyes, unable to wear contacts for long periods of time, red eyes, burning or stinging eyes. You can have these symptoms all the time or just some times as dry eye does have flare ups. One eye may be more affected than the other and you can have any number of these symptoms.

What Causes Dry Eye?

There are many factors that go into the diagnosis of dry eye. It can be environmental or biological. Some common biological causes are age, medical conditions like diabetes or thyroid disease. Some environmental factors are dry air during cooler months, computer usage, forced air heat, and fans while you sleep.

Let’s take a look at dry eye treatments – from simple self-care to innovative prescriptions and therapies – to help you see clearly and comfortably. This is not an exhaustive list but the most common reasons. Talk to your eye doctor to see if any of these are affecting your eyes.

Preventive Self-Care

Before we delve into more serious dry eye treatment options, here are a few simple self-care options that can manage minor cases of dry eye.

• Blink regularly when reading or staring at a computer screen for a long time.

• Make sure there’s adequate humidity in the air at work and at home.

• Wear sunglasses outside to reduce sun and wind exposure. Wraparound glasses are best.

• Take supplements with essential fatty acids as these may decrease dry eye symptoms.

• Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water each day to avoid dehydration.

• Find out if any of your prescriptions have dry eye as a side effect and if so, see if you can take an alternative.

  
  

Artificial Tears

For mild cases of dry eyes, sometimes over-the-counter eye drops can be helpful. There are preservative free options which are usually the best options. There are gel drops and ointments as well. At a dry eye evaluation with Dr. Miller she will go through all these options to choose the best for your eyes.

Prescription Dry Eye Treatments

There are several prescriptions that treat dry eye differently. Dr. Miller can advise the best option for your situation.

• Contact Lenses – There are specialty contact lenses that deliver moisture to the surface of the eye. They’re called scleral lenses or bandage lenses.

• Antibiotics– If your eyelids are inflamed, this can prevent oil glands from secreting oil into your tears. Your doctor may recommend antibiotics to reduce inflammation.

• Anti-inflammatory drugs – These are eye drops to control inflammation on the surface of your eyes (cornea) using the immune-suppressing medication cyclosporine (Restasis) or corticosteroids.

• Tear-Stimulating drugs – These are often in a nasal spray and can activate your nervous system to start producing more tears.

• Autologous blood serum drops – For serious dry eye that’s not responding to treatment, these eyedrops are made with a sample of your blood. It’s processed to remove the red blood cells and then mixed with a salt solution.

• Amniotic Membranes – for moderate to severe corneal involvement, these can kick start the healing process so that other therapies can work properly. These can be used along with other treatments as needed.

  
  

Dry Eye Procedures

• Punctal Plugs – Tear ducts can be plugged with tiny silicone plugs to reduce tear loss. By partially or completely closing your tear ducts, it can keep your tears from leaving your eye too quickly.

• Radio Frequency – Radio waves active your bodies water molecules to give your skin a deep heat that penetrates to the level of the meibomian glands, the oil glands of the eyes. Once this oil is melted Dr. Miller can express the glands to remove the clogs.

• Intense-Pulsed Therapy – This utilizes pulses of light to shrink blood vessels that are leaking inflammatory mediators to the lid margins. This is often the root cause of the hardening of the oil glands.

• ZEST Eyelash Cleaning - This is a deep clean of build up on the eyelashes with an okra based solution. This cleans the eyelashes and can help your eyes feel better very quickly if diagnosed with blepharitis.

You don’t have to suffer from the symptoms of dry eye. Talk to your optometrist about dry eye treatment options designed to address the underlying cause of your condition.
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Dry Eye Treatments