Dry Eye Awareness

What is Dry Eye?

Dry Eye is a common disease affecting vision quality and eye comfort. Symptoms of Dry Eye can vary widely from patient to patient. People with Dry Eye may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

• Dry, gritty, or itchy sensation
• Stinging
• Irritation
• Light sensitivity
• Visual fluctuation
• Watery eyes

At our clinic, we use a number of different technologies to determine whether you may be experiencing Dry Eye and to better understand your symptoms. Dry Eye is a serious condition that can dramatically affect your vision and your eye health.

What Causes Dry Eye?

Dry eye can be influenced by a number of factors related to environment and health that determine tear quality.
Tears have 3 layers:

• a mucus layer,
• an aqueous (watery) layer, and
• a lipid (oily) layer

If there’s an imbalance in these layers, your vision and comfort of your eyes may be affected. For example, if not enough lipid layer is being produced, tears may evaporate too quickly and cause symptoms ranging from discomfort to extra tear production and poor quality of vision.

Poor tear quality is often caused by Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD), a condition that impacts the production of oils in your tears. The most common form of MGD is obstruction of the oil-producing glands in the eyelids. At Eyecare Associates of Princeton, we will test your tear quality to determine whether MGD is contributing to or causing your dry eye symptoms and create a customized treatment plan to address it.

How do we treat Dry Eye?

Each case of Dry Eye is unique. We consider the factors causing your dry eye as well as your tear quality to develop a custom dry eye treatment plan.

Management considerations for Dry Eye include artificial tears/lubricant drops which provide short-term relief of symptoms. Other options include prescription anti-inflammatory drops and in-office obstruction removal.

OptiLight Treatment

OptiLight is an IPL, or intense pulsed light, treatment designed to improve the symptoms of dry eye disease and lipid deficiency dry eye. During treatment, the patient will wear protective eyewear as the treatment is delivered to the upper cheek area, under the eyes, and around the nose. Treatment breaks up any blockages in glands and abnormal blood vessels causing inflammation.
Learn More