Nowadays, as work becomes more stressful and time spent facing screens becomes longer, more and more people often feel dry eyes. However, people are often unable to distinguish between what is dry eyes and dry eyes, and in what cases they need to go to the hospital.
What is the difference between dry eyes and dry eye syndrome?
Dry eyes are a symptom, that is, the dryness of the eyes mentioned earlier. Part of dry eyes are transient, mostly due to visual fatigue caused by excessive eye use, and the treatment of visual fatigue can be recovered by buying eye drops from pharmacies and taking proper rest.
However, dry eye is not a symptom, but a disease in medical terms. Dry eye refers to a decrease in tear film stability due to reduced tear production or enhanced evaporation, accompanied by ocular discomfort and ocular surface tissue lesions. Dry eye is a growing concern, with the current worldwide prevalence of dry eye ranging from approximately 5.5% – 33.7%. In the United States, the prevalence of dry eye in women and men is 17% and 11.1%, respectively. According to the existing epidemiological studies in China, the incidence of dry eye in China is similar to that of other Asian countries and higher than that of the United States and Europe, with an incidence of about 21% – 30%. What’s more, some dry eyes are secondary to autoimmune diseases such as dry syndrome, which can even cause blindness if left untreated (picture below)!
What are the symptoms of dry eye?
Common symptoms of dry eye include dry eyes, eye pain, sore eyes, burning sensation, easy fatigue, itchy eyes, foreign body sensation, painful burning sensation, sticky secretions, fear of wind, photophobia, and sensitivity to external stimuli.
Sometimes the eyes are so dry that the basic tears are not enough, but instead they stimulate reflex tear secretion and cause frequent tears, but the tears secreted in this case are mainly the aqueous layer, lacking the lipid and mucin layers.
When the above symptoms appear, you need to raise your own alarm, should consider going to the hospital to check to determine whether they are dry eyes or dry eye disease, do not always go to the drugstore to buy some eye drops and that’s it!
Use anti-inflammatory eye drops to quench “thirst” carefully counterproductive
Because the common symptoms of dry eye are similar to conjunctivitis, many patients use anti-inflammatory eye drops on their own, resulting in more and more dry eyes. And some of the eye drops that make the eyes feel cool, which often add the ingredients to constrict blood vessels, although drops after a moment the eyes are very comfortable, but the cure is not the root cause, with more will also produce dependence, once the drug is stopped, can cause reflex congestion of the conjunctiva.
Dry eye is a common clinical disease that can be treated, and there are a variety of treatment methods that need to be selected under the guidance of a professional ophthalmologist.
(1) Artificial Tears
Supplementation with artificial tears is the most basic treatment for dry eye. No single eye drop is suitable for all dry eye patients, and the most appropriate artificial tear solution should be selected after several attempts. If you feel dry eyes at night or in the morning, you can use artificial tears in the form of eye ointment before going to bed.
(2) Anti-inflammatory eye drops
Anti-inflammatory eye drops can inhibit the release of inflammatory mediators from the ocular surface, restore tear secretion function and reduce symptoms. Currently used anti-inflammatory eye drops include cyclosporine A, corticosteroids, and tacrolimus, which can effectively treat dry eye and improve symptoms.
(3) Lacrimal punctal embolism
A pencil-sized embolus is placed temporarily or permanently in the tear dots. Since tears enter the nose and throat through the tear dots and tear ducts, blocking the tear outflow channels allows the tears to remain on the surface of the eye for a longer period of time.
(4) LipiFlow.
LipiFlow, an instrument for dry eye, treats lid gland dysfunction by adding heat and pressure to the inside of the eyelids to unblock the lid glands. When the opening of the lid gland is blocked, the oil secreted cannot be drained and the tear film lacks a lipid layer and tends to evaporate, leading to dry eyes.
(5) Nutrition