can eye drops worsen dry eyes? artificial tears are a first line treatment for dry eye
disease but then why do some people report that their eyes feel worse after using eye drops? in
this video we're going to explain why this can sometimes happen as well as share some helpful
tips so that this doesn't happen to you in your dry eyes treatment. let's take a look.
hello and welcome 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 so recently i had a patient tell me that
his eyes were feeling worse after using eye drops he reported that he had dry eye for several years
and got into the habit of just buying eye drops over the counter and had been using them about
four to six times a day but recently he reported that his eyes started to burn after putting his
eye drops in and he felt his eyes were becoming more and more red over time first off let me know
in the comment section right now if this has ever happened to you where your eyes felt worse or they
burn or stung when you put your eye drops in i would bet it's a lot more common than you'd think
in this particular patient's case i immediately asked him what brand of eye drops he was using
and again he was using about four to six times a day and he reported using either Visine or a brand
called Clear Eyes and immediately i was like ah i think i know what's going on here now if you've
seen any of our other videos on eye drops you know that not all eye drops are made the same and
eye drops that are labeled get the red out often contain ingredients which can irritate the eyes
and make dry eye worse these type of drops usually have an ingredient called Tetrahydrozoline in it
this helps constrict the blood vessels on the surface of the eye making them look more
white however it also tends to wear off and not become as effective over time really becoming
less and less effective the more you use it and it also happens to have a rebound effect so
eventually when it starts to wear off your eyes rebound and the redness gets worse which then you
often end up using it again to make your eyes look more white and then it rebounds it makes your eyes
look more red so then you use it again and the cycle just goes on and on most of the time though
when people feel burning or irritation right after they put eye drops in it's actually because of
the preservatives that are in those eye drops now many of the newer eye drops on the market they do
have preservatives but they have what is called a soft preservative which means that when it leaves
the bottle it denatures and doesn't cause any damage to the ocular surface or is to at least
believe to not be as as bad but many generics and older brands of eye drops including prescription
medications often have a preservative in it called benzalkonium chloride also known as bak
it is a great preservative and does do a job at preventing the bottle from getting contaminated
but it does cause damage to the ocular surface and some people are even allergic to it and even
in some cases we see the ocular surface become almost completely eroded because of this which we
call medicamentosa and for any of my young budding eye doctors out there that means that when you're
staining with fluorescein and you're looking under the sit lamp you may see a very diffuse spk across
the entire cornea as well as on the conjunctiva spk is short for superficial punctate keratitis
which kind of looks like these tiny little divot marks all over the entire eye it's basically a
diffuse sign of tissue damage now to help prevent this issue from happening to you number one
avoid using eye drops that are labeled get the red out there is a newer eye drop called Lumify
which doesn't have the same rebound effect as the many others however it still has preservatives in
it and so i only recommend it for occasional use such as like special occasions or if you're going
to take photographs with family things like that number two is to try to use preservative-free eye
drops if you can otherwise make sure to talk with your local eye doctor about what type
of dry eye you may have and what eye drop they would recommend for you in your case again there
are many different eye drops on the market and unfortunately not all of them are preservative
free now if preservative free eye drops are not an option for you or you happen to take prescription
eye drop medications then consider looking into the nano dropper eye dropper attachment which
is the sponsor for today's video but i think it's pretty ingenious that they were able to find a way
that they can make eye drops smaller by about 70 percent which makes your eye drops not only
last longer but it reduces the waste of the medication and reduces the amount of
eye drop that's getting to the surface of the eye including all of the preservatives and with
less preservatives you can hopefully reduce any irritation or potential ocular surface damage
we actually use the nano dropper on almost all the bottles of eye drops here in our eye clinic
if you do want to learn more about the nano dropper i'll put additional information in
the links in the description below if you want to check it out hey otherwise i appreciate you
watching the video if you did learn something new and you like learn this information hit that like
button for us and subscribe to the channel if you are new if you happen to struggle with things like
dry eye and want to learn more about different eye drops or need some tips on how to put them in
if you're having you know struggle hitting your eyes i've got a whole bunch of videos
coming up for you check those out otherwise keep an eye on it we'll see you in the next one