After corneal endothelial transplantation: teaching you how to take the right eye drops

  After eye surgery, several eye drops are basically required, and corneal endothelial transplantation is no exception. Compared to injections and infusions, eye drops can be operated by patients themselves, which is both simple and convenient. However, a simple thing that has to be done many times a day becomes complicated, and many patients will say, “I have become a professional in eye drops after surgery. I have to take several kinds of drops a day, several times over and over again, and I have tears in my eyes every day.” Here we will help patients to sort out how to take eye drops after endothelial transplantation to make the complicated things simple.  Patients with corneal endothelial transplantation generally need four types of eye drops, which may be slightly different for individual patients with other eye diseases.  The four types of eye drops are antibiotic eye drops, hormonal eye drops, cyclosporine eye drops and artificial tears.  Order: First of all, there is no strict backward and forward order between these four eye drops, but artificial tears are a bit thicker and can be placed at the end of the drops so that it does not form a protective layer on the surface of the eye and affect the absorption of other eye drops.  Interval: Although there is no strict order between the four types of eye drops, there is at least 10 minutes between each type of drops. Otherwise the latter eye drops will wash out the previous ones and affect the absorption effect. However, be careful not to forget to take another kind of drops because the interval is too long, because it is better to miss a certain kind of drug than to have a shorter interval.  The right amount: Each type of eye drop may be taken four times a day in the early postoperative period, and the doctor will gradually adjust the amount according to the patient’s recovery. The more drops you put in the eye, the better. 1 to 2 drops of each type of eye drop is fine because the conjunctival sac (the space between the eyelid and the eye) is limited, and too many drops will overflow.  The way: Gently peel back the lower eyelid and put the drops into the conjunctival sac, not on top of the black eye. After the drops, press the inner corner of the eye on the side of the nose – where the tear duct is located (if you open the lower eyelid on the side of the nose, you will see a small hole, which is the tear duct) to avoid losing the drops along the tear duct, and press the inner corner of the eye to keep the drops on the surface of the eye longer.