One warm busy afternoon, I was called to the ward and was asked to see a female patient in her late 50s, due to poor vision on her left eye. Auntie Beauty is referred to me by her attending physician, an infectious disease specialist. He wants me to check if her left eye also got

“Tearing, dry sensation, sandy feeling, redness, frequent blinking, at times blurry I panic, sometimes I get headaches, sticky eyelids, unable to open in the morning.”

As an eye doctor, I listened to the usual litany of people describing how their eyes feel, uncomfortable has different names and forms, and the most common culprit I say is dry eyes syndrome, too often underestimated but so many are affected. I like this eye disease it is so benign, a lot of cases are mild, mild enough to make you take a moment for yourself, take a break from your screen, close your eyes and momentarily have an inward awareness that you have been staring at your screen for too long, you forgot to blink. You’re stressed until your immunity is so down, eyelid infections are growing out of your tear glands that you don’t produce normal healthy tears.

When we blink our eyes, the motion is smooth, almost unthinkable, it’s a reflex. A blink reflex every 5 seconds is normal, longer than that your eyes dry especially under low humidity conditions in airconditioned rooms. Normal healthy is constantly produced and drained. Healthy production involves different glands, one that produce a watery layer, one that produce a mucoid layer and one that produce a lipid, oily layer. I can respectfully name them all but I have to stress their functions more than their names. These structures and their production are affected by hormones, stress, immune status, medications, drugs, eye surgeries, procedures, infections, dietary intake and environment condition.

Deficiency of one layer will present with symptoms unique to each patient, the longer the deficiency in tear production, the worse the symptoms will become. There are different modalities available to address each type, the key is to identify which layer is deficient, although so many cases are mixed deficiencies. If the watery or mucoid layer is more affected there are available eyedrops that can replace those components, a little harder to find than the very famous over the counter anti red eye drops, but definitely effective.

The oily layer deficiency is stepwise to address and maybe tedious for our patients. First step is cleaning the eyelids every day with an eyelid cleanser, second is eating a diet rich in omega 3 fatty acids, and then replacing natural tears with artificial tears in form of eyedrops frequently. This has been our stepwise eye treatment in the past.

Before

After

A new research and innovative device is now available, as part of eye treatment advise by eye doctors. A novel eyelid cleaning deep cleaning device helps to resurface the oily layer of the tear film, cutting short the tedious daily eyelid cleaning and frequent application of eye drops. It is innovative with thousands of micro rotations per minute, unclogging the glands producing the oily layer, removing the bacterial biofilm build up over the years and helping restore the natural tears you normally produce.

So many patients are happier with less symptoms and free of the need of frequent eye drop application. I am also happy with this device and this technology. It is cost effective and has so much symptomatic relief.

In Ophthalmology, we have categories, based on the symptoms and diagnosis, on the urgency to see an eye doctor- absolute, urgent and elective.