”Red eye” often occurs in summer and fall
”Red eye, also known as acute catarrhal conjunctivitis, is characterized by a high degree of conjunctival congestion, common subconjunctival hemorrhage, and punctate corneal epithelial exfoliation. Depending on the cause, pink eye can be divided into two categories: bacterial conjunctivitis and viral conjunctivitis, which have similar clinical symptoms but are more prevalent and dangerous than viral conjunctivitis.
How to prevent pink eye?
1. Maintain good personal hygiene and wash your hands thoroughly before and after touching your eyes. It is best not to touch your eyes with your hands.
2. Do not share towels or personal items with others, and wash your face and hands with running water. Do not touch the patient’s used washing utensils, handkerchiefs and medical instruments used for treatment.
3.Do not wipe your face with the towel provided by the restaurant to avoid contracting pink eye due to incomplete disinfection of the towel.
4.Do not share an eye drop, eye medication, eye cosmetics and other medicines or supplies that may come in contact with the eye with others. Do not use group eye drops to prevent eye disease.
5, red-eye patients should be properly isolated, avoid public places such as cabarets, hotels and shopping malls, and swimming in public pools is strictly prohibited to prevent the infection of others.
6, during the epidemic period, public taps, elevator handrails, door handles, telephones, utensils, toys and other attention to disinfection. Wash your hands after touching the computer keyboard, and avoid rubbing your eyes and face, especially those who use public keyboards.
7, during the epidemic period should be as little as possible to go to crowded public places.
The correct way to wash hands
Proper hand washing is one of the important elements of good personal hygiene and can effectively prevent the spread of pinkeye. After contact with the patient, before touching the eyes, mouth, nose, after sneezing or coughing, after touching public facilities such as handrails, door handles, elevator buttons, public telephones, and after returning home from outside, you should wash your hands promptly. Recommend a more reasonable five-step washing method: wet, rub, rinse, hold, wipe.
First, wet: wet your hands under the faucet, rub with soap or hand sanitizer.
Second, rub: palms, arms, fingers rubbing relative to each other for 20 seconds.
1, palms relative to each other, fingers together and rubbing against each other.
2, the palms of the hands along the back of the fingers rubbing each other, exchange.
3, palms relative to each other, hands crossed along the fingertips rubbing each other.
4, one hand holding the other thumb rotation rubbing, exchange.
5, bend each finger joint, rotate and rub in the palm of the other hand, exchange.
6, rubbing the wrist, exchange.
Three, rinse: rinse your hands with water.
Fourth, hold: rinse the faucet with clean water, and then close the faucet.
V. Wipe: dry with a clean towel/paper towel or dryer.
Treatment medication and care
When you get red eye, you should actively treat it, which generally requires promptness, thoroughness and persistence. Once discovered, treat immediately, do not interrupt, and continue treatment for one week even after the symptoms have completely disappeared to prevent a relapse. Since there is more eye discharge when suffering from acute conjunctivitis, you cannot rely solely on medication. It is important to take careful care of your eyes and keep them clean frequently. Use saline or 2% boric acid solution to wash or bathe the eye 2 to 3 times a day and wipe the lid margin with a sterile cotton swab before putting in eye drops to give full effect to the medication. When acute conjunctivitis first starts, cold compresses should be applied to the eye to help reduce swelling and redness.
If the infection is bacterial, the most effective antibiotic eye drops can be selected according to the strain of bacteria detected, and depending on the severity of the condition, eye drops can be ordered every 2 to 3 hours or every hour to maintain adequate drug concentration. The commonly used eye drops are 10%-20% sodium sulfamethoxazole, 0.3% haloperidol, 0.25% chloramphenicol eye drops, etc. In recent years, it was found that levofloxacin and gatifloxacin are more effective, but the application of fosfomycin drugs is generally not advocated for children, and fusidic acid eye drops with fewer side effects are available. For mixed viral infections of conjunctivitis, in addition to the application of the above drug therapy, but also available antiviral eye drops, such as adenovirus available 0.1% hydroxybenzazole eye drops, 0.1% peptide butylamine emulsion, such as small viruses available 0.1% herpes net, 0.1% no cyclic guanosine eye drops, etc., in recent years found acyclovir or more ciclovir effect slightly better, if necessary, can also apply interferon. When available, bacterial culture and drug sensitivity tests can be performed to select the appropriate antibiotics. When the inflammation is not controlled, hormonal eye medications are contraindicated.
Red eyes are generally not recommended to apply eye ointment, because the ingredients in eye ointment are basically made of petroleum jelly, supplemented by lanolin, with certain drugs. This type of eye ointment is characterized by non-heat and non-absorbent, most patients with pink eye originally have a lot of secretions, after applying the cream will make the temperature inside the conjunctival sac higher, bacteria grow and multiply quickly, secretions can not be drained out of the eye, the result makes the condition worse. If there is less secretion in the eye and there is painful ulceration of the eyelid, you can apply eye ointment properly once at night, such as ciprofloxacin, chlortetracycline or tetracycline eye ointment, and you need to scrub the secretion clean before each dose, and clean the secretion and eye ointment together the next day.
Patients should avoid the stimulation of light and heat during treatment, and should not force themselves to read or watch TV. They can wear sunglasses when they go out to avoid the stimulation of sunlight, wind and dust. If the condition does not improve after treatment at home, or if there are obvious symptoms of general discomfort, such as headache and fever, which indicate possible complications, you should see an ophthalmologist immediately.
What are the misconceptions about red eyes and their prevention and treatment in our daily lives?
Myth 1: Red eyes are suffering from pink eye
Not all symptoms of red eyes are red eyes. It is incorrect to attribute red eyes or eye discomfort to pink eye in the summer. Other eye diseases such as acute iridocyclitis, acute angle-closure glaucoma, and keratitis can also cause red eyes. In addition, retinopathy caused by diabetes, fundus hemorrhage; bleeding into the vitreous of the eye caused by hypertension can also cause red eyes and conjunctival hemorrhage, and these diseases, if not treated promptly, often cause irreversible and serious visual impairment.
Red eye attacks have their own unique symptoms, such as the patient will feel photophobia, red eyes, tearing, a foreign body into the eyes of sand grinding pain, and mucous-purulent secretions adhering to the surface of the cornea, making it difficult to open the eyes. However, pink eye generally does not affect vision and does not leave scars.
Myth #2: Red eye comes from looking into the eyes of a red-eye patient
”I just accidentally looked at him!” In everyday life, it is common to hear people complain after getting pink eye. In fact, there is no scientific basis for the argument that you get the disease from looking into the eyes of a red-eye patient. Experts say that red-eye is mainly transmitted through contact, just look without contact is not infected. But direct contact with the patient’s eyes or upper respiratory secretions, contaminated fingers, towels, clothing and other items or water, or share eye make-up, topical ophthalmic drugs, computers with patients; swimming in contaminated water sources, etc., but very susceptible to disease.
Therefore, experts suggest that prevention and control of pink eye, people must pay attention to eye hygiene in daily life, wash hands regularly, do not share basins and towels with others; outside access to public places such as shopping malls, swimming pools, buses and schools, etc. do not rub their eyes with their hands after contact with things outside; around the sick patients used basins, towels, handkerchiefs, etc. should be boiled and disinfected (not boiled utensils can be exposed to the sun), and placed separately.
Myth 3: Eye drops in advance can better prevent red eyes
In order to prevent red eyes, people often home to prepare a few bottles of anti-inflammatory eye drops or eye ointment used from time to time to prevent future problems. But despite the frequent use of medication to protect some people still “hit”. In advance or too much use of eye medication is not necessarily able to prevent red eyes. Experts say that eye medication is not a “panacea” and can not be applied casually. Many eye drops contain preservatives and other chemical ingredients, long-term application is not good for the eyes. For example, the abuse of antibiotic eye medication breaks the balance of the normal conjunctival capsule flora, causing severe infectious keratitis.
In addition, the same bottle of eye drops, should not be used by more than one person. Because the sharing will make the germs or original eye disease through manual contact with the bottle of medicine caused by germs cross-infection, increasing the chances of eye disease.
Myth four: red eye will not recur again
Some people think that red eye, like measles, will not suffer from it again after having it once, but it is not. After the red-eye cure can only get a short period of immunity, and there is no guarantee that you will not be infected again. And red-eye is very contagious, such as people do not pay attention to eye hygiene in life, resulting in bacterial and viral infections, or get well and come into contact with a person with the disease, red-eye recurrence is also common. To thoroughly prevent and control red eye “sneak attack”, only to catch the source of infection, cut off the transmission route, improve body resistance and pay attention to personal eye and hand hygiene, in order to better prevent red eye.
Myth 5: Red eyes must be washed.
Many patients wash their eyes with a variety of tea, to the hospital also insisted that the doctor to clean their eyes. In fact, washing the eyes is not beneficial to the improvement of the disease, but also easy to cause infection, unless the combined pseudomembrane patients need to be cleaned.
Myth 6: “red eye” can heal itself without treatment
Red eye can be light or heavy, some “fierce” bacteria and viruses infect the eye, if not treated in a timely manner, will spread, resulting in redness and swelling around the eye. Some acute “pink eye” is not treated in time, but may also develop into chronic “pink eye”, recurring episodes, will be more difficult to cure. Therefore, it is best to go to the hospital for treatment of pink eye.
Myth 7: Eye drops before swimming can better protect the eyes
The pool is a hotbed of bacteria, now people swim in the water are long a heart, try to choose a relatively clean and sanitary pool, and in the water before paying great attention to eye drops protection.
Swimming cautious environmental health is necessary, but before swimming drops of eye drops to prevent germs invade the eyes is not to achieve the effect. Because people swim with goggles, despite the water, there will be a small part of the water soaked into the eyes of the eye drops washed away, simply can not play a role in protecting the eyes. But out of the water drops with eye drops, and constantly blink but can be the eye bacteria, germs flushed out, to reduce the bacterial germs on the eye infection.
Myth #8: Some red-eye patients, in order to speed up the improvement of the disease, like to use a towel to cover up the eyes.
This practice is wrong. Do not cover the affected eye during the illness, because after covering the affected eye, eye secretions can not be discharged, while increasing the local temperature and humidity of the eye, the hole in the wall easy to make bacteria or viruses multiply, but aggravated the disease.