Effective Treatments for Dry Eye

When your eyes don’t have enough tears to keep them moist and healthy, dry eye is the resulting condition. Acute attacks of dry eye are more common when you’re young, but as you age, the condition often turns chronic. 

Healthy eyes have secretion glands in and around the eyelids, and it’s their job to produce the tears and deliver them to the eyeball. When you blink, both the upper and lower lids spread the tears across the cornea, the clear, curved membrane that covers the front of the eye. 

Tears are an integral part of eye health. They lubricate the eye’s surface, wash away debris and pathogens, and help keep your vision clear.

If you produce more tears than you need, the excess flows into ducts located in the inner corners of your eyelids, where they drain down into the back of your nose.

Dry eye is more than an annoyance. Left untreated, it can lead to complications that can directly affect your vision.

At Omphroy Eye Care, board-certified ophthalmologist Dr. Luis Omphroy and our staff understand how uncomfortable dry eye can be and how, left alone, it can be dangerous. That’s why we offer a number of effective treatment options to our patients in Aiea, Hawaii, to restore eye health.

What causes dry eye?

Dry eye usually occurs due to an imbalance between tear production and duct drainage. You may produce too few tears, your tears may be of an inferior quality, or both. The leading causes of insufficient tear production are:

• Aging
• Gland problems
• Underlying medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, thyroid problems)
• Medication side effects that decrease production
• Environmental factors (e.g., wind, indoor heat, and dry air)

In addition, normal tears should contain three layers, all of which protect and nourish the cornea: oil, water, and mucus. If any layer becomes damaged, your tears may spread unevenly, may be too watery, or may evaporate too quickly, all of which lead to dry eye.

Complications of untreated chronic dry eye

Dry eye has a number of major complications:

• Irritation or grittiness
• Burning or itching
• A feeling that there’s something in your eye
• Blurry vision
• Excessive watering
• Eye infections
• Damage to cornea

You wouldn’t think excessive watering would be a symptom of dry eye, but it's actually quite common. When there aren’t enough tears or tears of good quality, the eye tries to lubricate itself any way it can. 

The tears it produces, though, come only from the watery layer, so what you get is spillage rather than lubrication.

Effective treatments for dry eye

If you’ve developed dry eye, the best course of action is to come into Omphroy Eye Care so Dr. Omphroy can evaluate your symptoms, determine the underlying problem, and treat that problem effectively.

Until you come into the office, try some at-home remedies for symptom relief:

• Use over-the-counter gels, ointments, and drops
• Check your medications for a substitute that doesn’t dry your eyes
• Avoid smoking and secondhand smoke
• Limit screen time (you blink less)
• Wear sunglasses with side pieces to protect your eyes from wind, sun, and dirt
• Place a warm, damp compress over your eyes to stimulate tears
• Apply light pressure to stimulate tears

Depending on the severity of your condition, these remedies may or may not prove helpful.

If your dry eye has turned chronic, Dr. Omphroy can recommend a number of medical treatments that have a better chance of working.

For mild cases, we offer prescription lubricating drops or eyelid scrapers, both of which reduce the burning and gritty feeling. 

For long-term relief, we provide two options:

• Implanted but removable silicone/gel plugs in the tear ducts to prevent drainage
• Nonreversible surgery that closes the tear ducts, also to prevent drainage

In addition, Dr. Omphroy offers some innovative treatments, including intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy and amniotic membrane grafts. He discusses all your options with you when you come in for your evaluation.

Do you have dry eye but can’t get relief with at-home remedies? Make your next stop Omphroy Eye Care for state-of-the-art and effective treatment. 

To get started, give our office a call at 808-487-7700 today.