hey guys in this video i'm gonna show you how to find a dry eye specialist.
I have people who reach out and say they've seen three, four,
five different eye doctors who all say that they do dry eye and they just end up getting
samples of artificial tears, so i'm gonna show you how I would find a dry eye specialist,
who really knows what they're doing and i'm going to share some tips on ways to speed this process
up so that you can find someone right now. so smash that like button and let's take a look.
hey what's up everyone dr joseph allen here from the dr eye health show and
today we're talking about dry eye and dry eye specialists. now i've had a lot of people over
the years ask me about hey do you know a dry eye specialist in like this city or that city
and it's tough i don't know personally every eye doctor out there who treats dry eye
or truly understands or knows what they're doing and so i looked into it myself, how do i recommend
a doctor in someone's area where they may be living? how do you find someone that treats dry
eye? but trying to dig into it myself i figured out a couple of things that i want to show you
guys how i would do it and then just sharing a couple of tips of certain resources that may
help you find someone faster also being able to find a specific treatment you may be looking for
all right so the first thing i would do to find a dry eye specialist near me would be
i'd go into google type in dry eye specialist and you could type in near me that's what's suggested
but i actually find putting in the specific city that you live in or the nearest largest uh like
metropolitan area so for me it would be st cloud minnesota so when you type that in you're going to
see instantly a whole bunch of ads i just gloss over the ads personally because a lot of times
it's not even in your area or they're advertising for just general eye clinics glasses contacts
other services lasik and not necessarily dry eyes so i skip by all of that and then i look at the
first organic search right at the top thankfully in this example my own eye clinic which we do a
lot of dry eye at our clinic comes up first that's at the pinecone vision center one thing that i
want to kind of touch on is that when you go to these websites it's good to at least
look in to see that they offer some level of dry eye services a lot of eye clinics i'll say do not
know how to really advertise for themselves they do not necessarily list their services hopefully
if they say dry eye that means they'll at least offer some level of a dry eye exam or dry eye
consultation something like that now thankfully if you pull up our own website you will see a list of
what to expect and we do have dry eye right at the top along with other services that we offer
now i encourage you wherever you live check out the websites click on the dry eye section and
actually read through just some of it perhaps they offer special treatment maybe they offer special
diagnostics at least on our website we have an older video of Dr Nick Colatrella one of my
mentors and owners of the clinic he even has one of him showing and discussing osmolarity reader
from tier lab one of the instruments that we use and i would personally probably dig into maybe the
top three eye clinics that show up in the organic search look at their website see their feel maybe
give them a call and actually ask them what their dry eye examinations entail just for another
example let's say dry eye specialist Seattle now right away i'm really happy to see this
you find dry eyemaster.com that's Laura Perriman she's a friend and mentor for me in the world of
dry eye so uh she's doing an awesome job being that she shows up first but even for her i would
say go to the website look at what the kind of what they talk about are they talking about dry
eye different dry products kind of what services they offer and hopefully they make it really easy
for you to schedule an appointment and just for another example let's type in dry eye specialist
let's do san antonio texas because i used to that's where i went to school for optometry
let's see so right away we find dry eye center of san antonio it's not an ad and this is this
is actually pretty good if you look at this they have a lot of information on here about dry
eyes you can meet their doctors hey they even have a spot for dry eye literature this is
great so you can actually like find blogs and information about dry eye and their website
this is actually really cool to see their website because they do list out a lot of things about
dry eye even ocular rosacea and demodex like this is good information now i don't know these people
personally dr perriman our clinic the dry center of san antonio that i'm showing here
this is not sponsored by them this just happens to be cool stuff but this this makes me happy
that maybe if i was living in san antonio and i had dry eye this seems like a legit website these
people probably know what they're doing but again i'm just trying to highlight things that i would
look for finding a dry specialist in your area now i do want to share just two extra cool tips
or search engines that exist that may help you refine your search in finding specific doctors
or specific treatments i think it's really useful but i do want to just comment on
one that unfortunately a lot of eye clinics they may advertise that they do dry eye
and then you show up there and it's kind of just again a poor experience it may not really feel
that comprehensive i've had a lot of people comment and say that they've gone to several
eye doctors and just been very underwhelmed and i think a reason that that happens is because there
technically is no like special certification to call yourself a dry eye specialist at least
not anything specifically more than just obtaining your degree or licensure in that state to practice
or perhaps this is something that my profession does need to step up and do is make like a
certification or fellowship or something for a dry eye specialty again because there really is no
distinction between a doctor who says they're dry specialists and just does fluorescein staining and
gives you samples of tears versus a doctor who's using a lot of different examinations and tools
and offers different in-office treatments there's no way to really differentiate that at least not
quickly and easily so i'm sorry that this is so complicated okay so now i do know
two search engines that list dry eye doctors specifically first of which is dry eye directory
dot com now if you go here uh this is kind of like a blog site for a lot of dry information
you can find information about dry eye drops symptoms guides for treatments uh things like
that but you will find like a location and you can type in a search engine of where you're living
they show worldwide some of these people of course isn't a complete list of every dry
doctor out there but you'll find them in australia united states europe and you can even locate me
on this on this list so it's kind of cool now again it's not super comprehensive so you may not
have every eye doctor who practices dry eye in here but it's at least a resource for you
now another one that i really really like and i think this is going to be really huge for a lot
of people is dryingrescue.com now i've kind of partnered with them on a few things but they do
not only sell dry up products but they have a doctor locator which can get very comprehensive
and what i mean by comprehensive is that you can of course search where they may be located based
on your city your state but then depending if the doctor's completely filled it out they will list
the dry treatments that they offer such as this one here in florida offer scleral lenses lipiflow
intense pulsed light different amniotics debridement gland expression eye drops the
different eye services that they offer including contact lens fittings they have equipment there
whether it be tear lab osmolarity keratograph inflammatory mmp9 and then what i really love is
they list their insurances if they accept medicare do they have like eyemed, blue cross blue shield,
vsp, different you know medical and vision insurances now since dry eye is technically
a medical diagnosis keep in mind if you're using insurance it's going to be under your medical
insurance but i think in this case it's good that they list their vision insurances as well because
a lot of eye clinics like to see patients for a full comprehensive exam before doing a thorough
dry eye evaluation so still i think it's good that they're listing vision insurances because
some people may need glasses or contacts and they can work with that the problem i have with
a lot of these search ends including this one is that they're not always kept up to date and they
don't always list like every doctor who could be treating dry eye if you look on here you can find
me but the location that i'm listed under is like over a year and a half old like i haven't worked
at that clinic for a long time and the clinic i work at now is not even on here technically and we
have one of the most comprehensive dry eye clinics that i've ever seen next to laura perriman's in
seattle now outside of doing this research on your own using these different search engines uh it may
be difficult to still find somebody in your area like say somebody that you connect with and have a
good experience with so i do encourage you let us know in the comments section if you have dry eye
and if you've found a dry eye specialist near you share uh maybe who that doctor is
where you're from so that at least other people can connect with you and maybe get other ideas
and then ultimately if you know somebody who also has dry eye and you think they would benefit from
this video definitely go ahead and share this with them because again as i've learned finding
a dry eye specialist is pretty challenging now as far as a dry eye evaluation goes there
is a very wide range of different diagnostics that we'll use in the eye clinic to figure out
different types of dry eye someone to be having as well as what treatments may work best for somebody
and i do have a video coming out soon on our dry eye evaluation at our clinic just to show
people what it is we're thinking about from a doctor's standpoint as well as what you can
expect having a dry eye evaluation so to check out that specific video and learn more about
the dry eye treatments that are available check out our other videos in our series by clicking
or tapping the screen up over here otherwise again thank you so much for joining us again Dr
Allen here from the Doctor Eye Health show keep an eye on it and we'll see you in the next one