so a common complication and side effect of contact lens wear is something called a giant
papillary conjunctivitis or gpc it can cause irritation with contact lenses and can make your
vision blurry and things don't sit right so in this video we're going to break down what a gpc is
as well as the possible treatments your doctor may recommend that's today's video let's take a look
hey what's up everyone this is Dr. Allen here from the dr eye health show helping you
learn all about the eyes vision and finding the best vision products if you're new here to the
channel definitely hit that subscribe button down below so you don't miss any of the future videos
and let's just dive right into it so chances are if you're watching this video it's because your
doctor diagnosed you or told you that you had gpc or giant papillary conjunctivitis this is often
caused by contact lenses but can also be caused by other things things like prosthetic eyes or
any sort of other chronic foreign body on the eye maybe a suture from a surgical procedure that was
left on the eye this can also lead to something like a gpc now a giant papillary conjunctivitis is
essentially just a swelling of part of your eyelid most normally the upper eyelid now for basically
anybody out there you can develop a just normal papillary conjunctivitis that's not giant most
commonly we see this due to things like allergies possible bacterial infections of the eye or
in general just inflammation of the eyelid itself but most often in the eye clinic we see a gpc
form due to contact lens wear and you might think well why is this happening to contact
lenses am i allergic to the contact lens itself usually not most of the people who get a gpc
are people who wear contact lenses a lot these are individuals who wear them 16 plus hours throughout
the day could be somebody who over wears their lenses especially if they're wearing a two week or
a monthly lens and they're wearing them for a lot longer than they should be or if you're somebody
who sleeps in a contact lens or somebody who doesn't clean your contact lenses appropriately
what happens is that your contact lenses they sit on the eye for a long period of time and the
proteins in your tears they attract to the surface of that contact lens and you build up a biofilm
on the surface of those lenses and your body starts to not only develop an allergic reaction
to those proteins but basically to the chronic presence of that contact lens sitting on the eye
and in addition to these proteins on the contact lens a poor fitting contact lens on the eye can
also be part of the reason why this could be aggravating the upper eyelid and that's exactly
why an exposed suture from an eye surgery or maybe a prosthetic eye can also cause these sort of gpcs
now a gpc looks different than just your typical allergic response on the eyelid these gpcs are
giant they are large and they look kind of gross or can have a kind of what's called a cobblestone
appearance now your doctor will recognize this and diagnose this condition oftentimes by flipping
or everting the upper eyelid it's not a painful procedure you maybe see kids or remember kids on
the playground who would flip their islands inside out it's essentially the same procedure we just
ask the patient to look down we use something like a cotton tipped applicator or a q-tip
and we push that on the upper tarsal plate and we flip the eyelid inside out this is often a
best practice for all eye doctors to do this on patients who do wear contact lenses especially
people who wear monthlies or bi-weekly contacts people who wear daily contact lenses because
they're replacing the new lens every single day they aren't caring for those same proteins to
the next day and they're less likely to have these sort of aggravations or problems with gpcs either
way if you ever get diagnosed with a gpc the best practices that most doctors will recommend is
one staying out of your contacts give them a break usually you have to take a break from contact
lenses and just switch to glasses for maybe a couple of weeks sometimes a little bit longer
closer to a month or more depending on how severe it is and how quickly the inflammatory reaction
comes down in addition your doctor could prescribe a topical steroid eye drop or ointment that will
help control the inflammation and bring it down quite a bit ultimately a couple tips for you that
your doctor will probably recommend anyway is that if you are having a gpc or have a history of them
and you are still wearing a monthly or bi-weekly lens and if you could switch to a single use
daily contact lens that is probably going to be a better option again less chance of a gpc
or your doctor unfortunately could say you know what we have to completely quit contact lenses all
together stick with glasses or consider something like refractive surgery such as lasik or prk
oftentimes in my experience people who have gpcs often need to remain out of contact lenses or use
additional treatments for at least two to four weeks i've even had some patients to have to
stay out of contact lenses for up to three months for this to really calm down but oftentimes those
are individuals who abuse their contact lenses they're wearing the same like bi-weekly contact
for like three months sleeping in them and their cornea is warped and have all other complications
hopefully if you're watching this and you just know that that's you then it's time to be a
little bit more serious about taking care of your contacts and i know i've said this across a lot
of different videos on this channel before but it is a higher risk of complications from sleeping or
over wearing your contact lenses and i do have a video about the time i accidentally slept in
my contacts and i go over some of the other risk factors of why sleeping in contacts is not a good
idea if you want to check out that video you can go ahead and click or tap the screen up here to
design or i'll include a link to that in the video description below just again so you can learn a
little bit more more about what's going on in the eye otherwise another quick tip that i know helps
some people if you're somebody who wears a monthly or a bi-weekly contact and maybe a daily contact
lens isn't out there for you or it's just not in the financial bucket right now for you to be able
to afford a daily contact lens then cleaning your contact lenses with a hydrogen peroxide
solution such as clear care i've had several patients have good results with just switching
from my multi-purpose solution to more of the hydrogen peroxide solution because there's no
preservatives in a hydrogen peroxide solution and you could be someone who's just hypersensitive to
preservatives in the other solution so maybe giving that a try otherwise i hope you found
this video educational and helpful if so smash that like button for me and leave a comment in
the section below about your experience with gpc or giant papillary conjunctivitis if you've had
it before how long did it take to treat it and if you have any other general questions about
contact lenses go ahead and check out my full series about contact lenses and the different
options that are available otherwise again thanks so much for watching this is dr joseph allen here
from doctor eye health keep an eye on it and we'll talk to you soon as a gpc in this uh okay nerds