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by iskippedlegday0 2405 days ago
Eye drops do not treat the underlying cause of dry eye (unhealthy/insufficient tears, inflammation (e.g. blepharitis), or in rare cases neuropathic pain). They are just symptom relief.

For anyone reading this who manages their dry eye with eye drops, please do some reading or see a specialist. If all you do is use eye drops, your dry eye will likely get worse.

Eye drops bolster your tear film and help prevent desiccating stress to the eye surface, but they lack growth factors and other important compounds found in biological tears, and can even contribute to washing those away.

Last, whatever you do, don't use eye drops with preservatives (e.g. benzalkonium chloride).
1 comments
arcticfox 2405 days ago
> For anyone reading this who manages their dry eye with eye drops, please do some reading or see a specialist

Good advice to check, of course, but my friend that has chronic dry eye from Lasik was basically told it's a lifetime of drops for her now.

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raverbashing 2405 days ago
It might very well be "just drops", but it seems knowledge of management of dry eyes is not so widespread

See this https://www.reddit.com/r/lasik/comments/cfxewr/how_to_fix_dr...

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iskippedlegday0 2405 days ago
How many quality opinions did your friend get? I also know people with DED and from my experience not all docs understand the disease well. Obviously you know more than I do, but I'm very skeptical that there isn't more to the story than "a lifetime of drops". Also, I hope your friend has tried autologous serum drops.
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foobiekr 2405 days ago
That is a great suggestion IMHO. ASTs are pretty amazing but they're not a cure for everyone.

In the case above, I'm referring to my spouse. Her entire family has this problem - dry eye, frequent / continuous corneal erosions - setting in by their mid-late thirties. These are the people who end up wearing sleeping goggles, ointment, taping their lids shut, etc. It's not a lack of tear production, it's poor corneal basement layer adhesion for some undiagnosed reason and, probably, eyelids drifting open during sleep.

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gdebel 2404 days ago
Ciclosporin 2% eyedrops and/or punctum plugs may be useful. I home she'll get better eventually.
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foobiekr 2403 days ago
she went way past both of those. it was not a fun time getting things compounded.
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