﻿Dry eye or Keratoconjunctivitis sicca, to give its medical name is a very common
complaint, so why is it that many people live in misery
because they can't get relief for their dry eyes?
I'm going to be talking a lot more about
dry eyes on this channel and in the series.
But before we can talk about the causes and the treatment for dry eyes,
we must establish, first of all, what the type of dry eye you have is.
The good news is that there are only two
main categories of dry eye problems based on the health of your tears.
Let's talk about it.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Martin's Eye Tips
with me optometrist Martin Oguzie,
and on this channel, all about helping you to see better, see more comfortably
and hopefully be less anxious about you eyes. Now
If that sounds interesting to you,
then please go ahead and subscribe to the channel hit that notification bell as well
so you get reminded every time I release a new video. For many years now,
I felt that dry eye has been one of the most common yet widely
misunderstood problems that we as eye care professionals have to deal with.
A good indication of the scale of the issue can be found by just taking
a look at the huge global industry around dry eye products and therapies,
don't get me wrong, these products are needed
but you'd think that surely with all this
choice of products dry eye, must be a condition that is well catered
for and in fact need not be a problem in this day and age.
The reality is that we just a little bit of digging around
you'll find that many people that live
with and suffer in silence because of their dry eye problems.
And worse still, there are many people out there who are really sink into depression
as a result of the misery that dry eye causes them.
And this report many series on making sense of dry treatment.
I'm going to be unpacking the problem
and we'll also be looking at the causes and the best strategies for treatment.
So just make sure you subscribe
to the channel and that way you don't get to miss the series.
So what exactly is dry eye?
Well, it's very simple, and yet it's a complex problem all at the same time.
And in this video I'm going to be keeping it simple and in subsequent videos
will uncover a little bit more about the problem and also the treatment.
Now, we could just simply say that dry eye
is a condition where your eyes are dry and that's the end of that, as many
definitions that you perhaps might find online will do.
However, my tip for a better understanding of the problem of dry eye is
to define and concentrate on the medical name of dry eye, which I believe holds
the key to how we manage and treat dry eyes.
Medically dry eye is known as Keratoconjunctivitis sicca
often abbreviated to KCS.
So what does that mean?
Well, if we break it down, we find that there are four key words
that make up the name and those words are Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca.
So Kerato is the medical name for cornea.
That is the front lines of the eye.
Conjunctiv refers to conjunctiva, which is the transparent skin that lines
the white of the eye and wraps to cover the inside of the eyelids.
Itis is a medical postfix name to indicate
inflammation, so any condition that ends in Itis is an inflammatory condition.
Examples include Iritis, Sinusitis, Arthritis and so on.
And Sicca is derived from the Latin word, a siccus meaning dry. Now when we put
all that together, we then have the
word Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca which quite literally means corneal
conjunctiva inflammation caused by dryness.
So the important take away from the name is that the fact that the main problem
to overcome with dry eye is not just one of dryness but one of inflammation.
The most important word to remember in the name Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca
is the word Itis or inflammation.
And the reason for this is because it is so often overlooked in unsuccessful dry eye
treatments, there will be more on this as we go through the other videos in the series.
Now, the other thing that I really want
to hit on in this video is the fact that while dry eye can be a complex condition,
all dry eye problems will fall into one of only two simple categories.
So you dry is either an evaporative dry eye or it's an aqueous deficient dry eye.
So what does all of that mean?
Evaporative dry eye is the problem of your tears
evaporating way too quickly, resulting in dry patches on the cornea
and the conjunctiva that are not getting good coverage with tears.
Aqueous deficient dry eye, on the other hand,
is the problem that arises because your eyes simply are not producing enough
water, which then results in dryness of the cornea and the Conjunctiva.
And this is all significant because
the longer the dryness goes on, the more inflammation arises,
along with all of the uncomfortable symptoms associated with dry eyes.
Now, of the two categories of dry eyes, aqueous deficient dry eye is by far
the most serious and the most difficult to treat as well.
Now, my experience of dry eyes sufferers
tends to be three camps that dry eye suffer, symptoms fallen.
So first of all, we have those that complain of a watery dry eye.
I know this sounds contradictory, but it's a common one.
Then you have those of
reporter blurry dry eyes, and then you have those that report all
the symptoms and extreme discomfort as well.
So the next video,
I'll go into more detail and also explain the causes and why this is critical
to understanding how we go about treating and managing dry eyes.
So make sure you hit the subscribe button and also that notification bell as well,
to get reminded when I released that video.
Also, check out the link
in the description box for some extra tips to soothing your dry discomfort quickly
and effectively if you want to get started.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
And we look forward to catching you in the next video.
Take care.