hey what's up Dr Allen here July is dry eye awareness month so today we're talking all
about dry eye disease and shedding some light on an advanced dry eye treatment that is out there
now in the dry eye space and especially on this channel we've talked a lot about
meibomian gland dysfunction or mgd which accounts for the vast majority of people who suffer from
dry eye syndrome including myself this is where the oil glands of your eyelid they stop producing
quality oils and then that leads to evaporation of your tear film which causes increase in osmolarity
or salt content of your tears that causes ocular surface damage to the surface of the eye and then
that causes an inflammatory cascade which ends up leading into this whole inflammatory cycle and it
just repeats itself but what if there was a way that we could not only treat the meibomian glands
but allow them to heal and get better in comes the ipl from Lumanis and i recently
had the opportunity to fly out to Seattle Washington to meet with Dr. Laura Periman aka
Dry Eye Master of the Periman eye institute where not only did i get a chance to have my own eyes
examined by Dr Periman but then i got to receive an ipl treatment by her herself and this was
really special because dr Periman is not only an esteemed author and thought leader in the dry eye
space but her herself developed several of the protocols that are used for luminous and the ipl
instrument for ipl dry eye treatment and it wasn't just cool to get the treatment myself
but also because i got to learn directly from dr Periman so what is ipl again it stands for intense
pulsed light and is a medical treatment a medical device that your doctor or whoever's running it
can select special filters and choose how much or what type of energy is going to be applied
to the tissue depending on what it is they're treating now ipl is not necessarily a
new technology it's been around since the mid-1990s and has largely been used in dermatology
for treatment of things like acne hair removal rosacea and removing things like spider veins or
telangelectasia as the medical term in fact we see a lot of these new spider veins or these abnormal
blood vessels growing along the eyelid margins when there's presence of inflammation and bad
dry eye disease especially in the presence of ocular rosacea in fact in the early 2000s when
doctors were treating patients with rosacea with ipl that's when they started to notice that
these patients were having improved symptoms in their dry eye disease and that's kind of how it
kind of got discovered as a treatment for dry eye and since then just a plethora of research has
been coming out into really the reasons why ipl affects the eyelids and helps with mgd and dry eye
now what's been found and published in studies is that it works through several different mechanisms
most notably is that of photocoagulation this is one of those abnormal blood vessels on the
eyelid basically get capped off or burnt through the photocoagulation process and that's just two
things one it stops those blood vessels from being there on the eyelid because it closes them off
which makes your skin look fantastic but then even more importantly is that it stops pro-inflammatory
cells from leeching out of those blood vessels into the eyelid and into the meibomian glands
which allows your meibomian glands to start healing and produce better quality oils then
because this whole process of having the ipl it's a high amount of energy it also heats up
the skin and the meibomian glands themselves so the increased heat temperature does also melt any
of the solidified oils that are already in those glands allowing those oils to express out of those
glands and allow you to produce healthy oils again those are probably the two biggest reasons that
i hear a lot of doctors quoting but also in the literature they also state that the light energy
can kill a lot of microorganisms that are resting or living on the eyelids which a lot
of people with dry eye often do have and these organisms do lead to things like blepharitis
which is another condition that causes a lot of inflammation in the eyelids leading to
destabilization of the tear film and dry eyes as well plus there is also some interesting findings
that ipl may reduce inflammatory and neurogenic pain which is a significant factor for people with
severe forms of dry eye so it makes more sense why so many people do find relief
after having ipl treatment now typically ipl treatment for dry eyes is at least four
sessions and it's spaced about two to four weeks apart with then maintenance doses done
typically once a year or at least kind of as needed now before you can have ipl
treatment you first have to have a full dry eye evaluation with your doctor mainly so that your
doctor can accurately diagnose that you do have dry eye disease and not something else
and then to ultimately figure out that yes you do have form of meibomian gland dysfunction before
you have the real procedure your doctor does have you clean your face thoroughly so don't wear
makeup on these appointments then afterward they put in some numbing drops instilled into your eyes
and then they'll place these metal eye shields underneath your eyelids or sometimes on top of
the eyelids as well then your doctor applies this cooling coupling gel kind of like you'd
have if you're having an ultrasound done now when you get this done the light is literally
intense now i have heard other practitioners say that it is a gentle discomfort but no
it hurts have you ever had somebody snap a rubber band onto you at some point that's about as close
of a accurate description as i can come up with except this rubber band is being snapped
on your face near your eyes i don't want to sugarcoat it for you because it really does
sting i've even heard at least one other dry eye specialist who does ipl who states that if
it doesn't hurt at least a little bit you're not getting an effective treatment but i can
tell you that even with this discomfort it's totally worth it because after even my first
treatment i was already experiencing results i remember feeling less problems with my dry eyes
my comfort with my contact lenses had improved and my skin had looked just amazing for not just that
next day but for several weeks after my complexion was so much better and my eyes just seemed to
kind of glow and light up and remember that ipl has long been used in dermatology to help with
things like acne and rosacea so it does have this awesome effect on your skin now there are a lot
of incredible published studies on ipl as a dry eye treatment and all the different benefits that
people get for it especially if you have a history of evaporative dry eye from meibomian gland
dysfunction if you yourself are an eye nerd like me you want to read these studies something you're
considering i'll put links to several of these studies in the video description below in addition
if this is something that you're interested in yourself if you want to find a doctor who has this
device because not every eye clinic will have an ipl treatment then again in the description i'll
put a couple of links to different search engines that should help you find if there's somebody
in your area that offers this as a service now as far as the cost of an ipl treatment session
it does vary depending on the practitioner and the office that you're going to to my knowledge
insurance does not cover any of these procedures at this time at least not the timing of this video
so it's going to be cash pay and i would expect it to be somewhere in the 4 to 700 u.s range for
just in one individual session but certainly ask around a lot of clinics may do a packaged
deal because it is recommended to have at least four treatments for specifically treating dry
eye but again you can shop around and try to find clinics that are not only offering in your area
but may have it at a more competitive price but i think the fact that it's not only getting the
oils expressed out of the glands but in fact is treating some of the root causes of inflammation
with the eyelids i think that's reason why it's having such better clinical effect and why so
many other eye doctors are incorporating ipl into their dry eye protocols now i personally have a
tough decision to make which is do i go hunt out a local eye doctor in my area to continue getting
these treatments for ipl because again you need at least four treatments and i only had the one or
do i wait for our clinic to acquire the ipl device so we can start offering it to our
patients because i know it's something that we're strongly looking into and hopefully we'll we'll
be able to start offering it soon but certainly let me and everyone else in the community know
if you've had ipl what has your success been have you noticed improvements let us know in
the comment section below uh love to hear from you guys either way thanks so much for watching
hit the like button subscribe you know the drill keep an eye on it and we'll talk to you soon