Artificial tears
Lubricating eye drops are actually at the top of the list for a major reason. Not just that artificial tears add lubrication to the eye but they actually help prevent damage to the surface of the eye from chronic dryness so in the clinic we actually use a yellow medication called fluorescein sodium and we put that on the eye.
There are little dry spots on the eye these little dry spots off to the side, those are actually like little tiny divots on the surface of the eye so the eye should be smooth like glass when they’re really dry those cells on the surface of the eye actually, get damaged and we call that superficial punctate keratitis.
Superficial punctate keratitis is basically dead cells caused by this dryness on the surface and the body tries to heal that those damaged cells with inflammation now the problem is that when the eye starts having inflammation it’s like adding gasoline to fire it often makes things worse.
So one of the big things about using those dry eye drops or artificial tears are to prevent inflammation from really grabbing hold and making things worse so if your doctor has prescribed to you
Amniotic membrane
If you have chronic dry eyes then there is a newer treatment called an amniotic membrane. In this treatment dry dehydrated amniotic tissues that is their in eye clinics or they have frozen amniotic tissues they use these for people who have bad chronic burns on the eye people who have any sort of bad tissue damage fto the cornea.
This amniotic tissue is fantastic it adds a lot of different antibodies to the eye it is harvested from a woman or from a pregnant woman’s amniotic sac it’s cleaned sterilized and then it’s either frozen or dehydrated and we can put that on the cornea for a short time and it helps pretty much clear off a lot of inflammation from the surface of the eye
Autologous serum
It’s basically where they do a blood draw, you actually need your doctor to write a prescription to send it to them to the actual to the phlebotomist to do a blood draw they actually, centrifuge your separated blood.
It’s basically separating your plasma from your blood cells and that’s the easiest way to think about it they’re actually making artificial tears liquid artificial tears from your own blood antibodies all the white you know you basically separate the blood cells so you’re just using basically the plasma of the eye and you actually put your plasma of you love your blood and you use that as an artificial tear.
Advantages
- It helps your body’s own immune system fight off the dryness.
The downside is again you need a prescription you need to go to the pharmacy and go to the phlebotomist get it drawn they have to prepare it and not every pharmacy or phlebotomist will do this not every lab will do this so you have to fight your doctor has to find a lab that does it and I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of doctors don’t prescribe it.
Scleral contact lenses
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| Scleral contact lenses Image By-Wikipedia | Image Source- L8rgator |
Scleral contact lenses are an excellent treatment for dry eyes as long as you’re able to put them in taking them out safely sclera lenses are kind of new. They’re kind of coming back into how you can treat you can treat a lot of things with sclera lenses certainly keratoconus but also dry eyes
Basically, you fill that lens full of liquid in the contact lens kind of seals around the sclera on the white part of the eye and holds that liquid to the surface of the eye so that basically the eye the cornea is bathed in the liquid all day long now often times people with severe dry eyes may have to take these out refill the liquid and replace it maybe a couple times a day but in terms of a dry eye option, it’s pretty cool.
Sclera lenses have been around for a long time but it’s kind of come back and the new designs have come out so it’s really great.
Lipiflow
In this procedure, there is actually a device that goes on the eye and it actually supplies heat and pressure to your eyelids and the whole point of that is actually to get the oil glands in the meibomian glands.
Meibomian glands are they’re these little vertical glands that run on the top and bottom portion of your eyelids and they actually secrete this oil that prevents your tears from evaporating now the real concern is that these oil glands eventually will die off if they get clogged or they become inflamed and they don’t work anymore and then your tears evaporate almost instantly.
Lipiflow can help get these oil glands open up if that doesn’t happen these oil glands can actually, die off.
Very informative and nicely done
Great Content… Keep it up