7 Symptoms of Dry Eye

“Dry eye” is a common medical problem that occurs when your eyes don’t contain enough tears to stay moist and healthy. While you might have acute attacks of dry eye when you’re young, the condition often turns chronic as you age.

Healthy eyes contain glands in and around the eyelids that secrete tears. As you blink, both your upper and lower lids spread the tears across the cornea, the clear, curved membrane at the front of the eye.

The tears lubricate the eye surface, wash away both debris and pathogens, and help keep your vision clear.

If you produce excess tears, these flow into ducts located in the inner corners of your eyelids and drain into the back of your nose.

Dry eye is more than a nuisance. Left untreated, you can experience eye infections, damage to the eye’s surface, and blurry vision.

At Omphroy Eye Care in Aiea, Hawaii, our board-certified ophthalmologist, Dr. Luis Omphroy, and our staff know how uncomfortable dry eye can be and how dangerous. That’s why we offer state-of-the-art treatments to restore your eye health.

What causes dry eye?

Dry eye can most often be pinned on an imbalance between tear production and duct drainage. People with dry eye produce too few tears, their tears are of an inferior quality, or both. The leading causes of inadequate tears are:

Getting older
Secretion gland problems
Medical conditions (e.g., thyroid problems, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis)
Medication side effects that decrease tear production
Environmental factors like wind and dry air

Tears contain three layers that nourish and protect the cornea: oil, water, and mucus. If any becomes damaged, your tears may be too watery, not spread evenly, or evaporate too quickly. The result in all cases is dry eye.

7 symptoms of dry eye

Dry eye has seven major symptoms:

Irritation
Gritty feeling
Burning sensation
Itchiness
The feeling that something’s in your eye
Blurry vision
Excessive watering

While you may think that watery eyes wouldn’t be a symptom of dry eye, it's actually quite common. The eye attempts to lubricate itself when there aren’t enough tears or tears of good quality. What it’s able to produce comes only from the watery layer, so what you get is spillage.

Help for your dry eye

If you’ve developed dry eye, make an appointment with us at Omphroy Eye Care. Dr. Omphroy can evaluate your symptoms, determine what’s causing them, and treat the problem effectively.

At-home dry eye care

Until your appointment, you can try some at-home remedies for symptom relief:

Use over-the-counter gels, ointments, and drops
Substitute medications for those without dry eye as a side effect
Avoid smoking and secondhand smoke
Limit screen time (you blink less)
Wear wraparound sunglasses to protect your eyes from wind, sun, and dirt
Use a warm, damp compress over your eyes
Apply light pressure to stimulate tears
Switch from contacts to glasses to ease discomfort

Medical dry eye care

If your dry eye has become chronic and developed to the point that at-home remedies don’t work, we can recommend a number of medical treatments.

For mild cases, we suggest prescription lubricating eyedrops or eyelid scrapers; they reduce the burning and gritty feeling.

We use two options for long-term relief:

Removable silicone/gel plugs implanted into your tear ducts to preventing drainage
Non-reversible surgery to close the tear ducts to achieve the same result

Dr. Omphroy also offers innovative treatments such as intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy and amniotic membrane grafts. He discusses all your options with you at your consultation.

If you’re experiencing the symptoms of dry eye, there’s no need to suffer. Omphroy Eye Care can help. Give us a call at 808-491-6513 to set up an appointment.