Comprehensive Dry Eye Diagnosis and Treatment
Dry Eye Diagnosis
Dry eye is a very common eye disease, research shown that the prevalence of dry eye can be as high as 50% (meaning in every 2 people, there is 1 having dry eye). Female, Asian, elderly, prolonged mobile and computer devices users and contact lens wearers are those with high risk of having dry eye.
Our centre equips with a machine called OCULUS Keratograph 5M which is specially made for dry eye diagnosis. Through analysis its results, we can distinguish whether your dry eye is caused by lack of water (aqueous deficient dry eye), lack of oil (evaporative dry eye) or mixed type. Besides, Keratograph 5M has a high definition Infra-red camera which can perform a 2D scan of you meibomian glands along the eyelids. Since meibomian gland dysfunction is highly associated with evaporative dry eye, having a scan of the meibomian gland is very critical in dry eye diagnosis.
Dry Eye Treatment
There are various ways to treat dry eye, it is very important to make an accurate diagnosis before proceeding any forms of treatment. The following will just discuss some of the general ways of dry eye treatment. For other forms of treatment, it is necessary to consult optometrists or other eyecare professionals for further discussion.
1) Change working environment and avoid working in air-conditioning or low humidity environment for long time. If it can not be changed easily, a mini humidifier is suggested to increase the humidity near your working place.
2) Use preservative free artificial tears. Preservatives are toxic and proinflammatory, long term use will make the tear film even more unstable and cause drier eye.
3) Do blinking exercise. Meibomian glands are for producing the lipid (oil) layer of the tear film. Blinking can stimulate the secretion of oil from the meibomian gland, therefore knowing how to blink correctly is essential for keeping the meibomian glands function properly. Extensive near work will reduce the blinking frequency, therefore heavy mobile and computer users are of high risk of developing meibomian gland dysfunction over time. Blinking exercise can lower the risk of meibomian gland dysfunction development, the instruction is as follows:
Blinking Exercise Instruction:
Close your eyes tightly without using any of your facial or brow muscles. Now open them and close them forcefully and tightly. Do a session of 20 blinks every hour for two weeks.
4) Warm compress the eyes, two times per day. The temperature and time required for melting the blocked oil in the meibomian glands is around 45°C for 10-15 mins.
Therefore, some specially made heat eye patches are needed to be purchased to have such temperature and lasting time.