Dry Eye Clinics
What is dry eye?
Approximately 30% of the UK population suffer with dry eye. Patients report environmental factors, digital devices and poor sleep quality can have a major impact on how their eyes feel. Often dry eye occurs with other conditions such as diabetes/prediabetes, perimenopause/menopause, asthma, hypothyroidism and others.
What is dry eye?
Your tear film is designed to protect the front surface of your eye. It keeps the cornea clear and moist as well as providing important infection fighting components.
There are three layers of your tear film. The inner mucin layer sticks your tears to the front of the eye, the aqueous layer which is the main bulk provides the watery layer and then the lipid layer which prevents the aqueous layer evaporating.
Dry eye occurs when your natural tears change in quantity or quality and become saltier and more concentrated which then triggers an inflammatory response.
Some people don’t experience symptoms - whereas others notice:
Gritty, itchy irritated eyes
Tired, sore, aching and heavy
Blurring of vision which changes with blinking
Watery eyes
Types of dry eye:
Evaporative dry eye:
80% of dry eye sufferers have this type
This is when the outer lipid layer of the tears isn’t working as well as it should leading to quicker tear evaporation and dry eyes
Aqueous deficient dry eye:
20% of dry eye is due to this - although often will have an element of lipid deficiency also.
This is when there is not enough tear volume to keep the eyes moist
Can be caused by general health issues or medications.
Why is it important? If not treated properly, dry eyes can progress and can lead to damage to the front surface of the eyes. There is also a link between dry eyes and depression and poor sleep.
Treatment for dry eyes
What we can do
Treatment normally begins with eye drops. Most optometrists will recommend eye lid cleaning and hot compresses. For further treatment after this - you will need to see a dry eye specialist. This is why we’re now investing in becoming a dry eye specialist clinic.
We have a dry eye analyser which looks into the root cause of your dry eye as well as investigating the different layers of your tear film. Depending on the results, and the Specialist Optometrist findings, they will recommend the treatment most effective for your type of dry eye. A bespoke treatment for your individual eyes.
You will understand why dry eye occurs, and how treatment is effective. To be compliant with at home treatments, you need to understand why!
When the at home treatment options are not working as effectively as they could, we now offer in practice treatment options:
Heat Mask and manual meibomian gland expression = unblocking those blocked glands to get your tears more stable and enabling you to keep up maintenance at home. This may need to be repeated every 3 months.
Tixel = We can now offer treatment using thermal-mechanical action to clinically significantly improve your evaporative dry eye. This is an in practice treatment which takes just a few minutes each time. We do 4 sessions to start with, then a top up every nine months on average.
BlefaCalm = deep cleaning of the eyelids; removing the debris caused by blepharitis when at-home lid cleaning isn’t effective. An in-practice treatment with exceptional precision giving your eyelids a really good clean, enabling you to carry on maintaining at home. Usually, one treatment every 6 months keeps most lids clean and healthy.
Specialist Optometrists
Becci Zawadzki
Lisa Jinks
Anita Naybour
