Dry Eyes Simplified

Healthy tear film consists of an  emulsification of oil, water, and mucus

When the oil layer is insufficient, this will lead to an unstable tear film that can evaporate from your eyes or drain out of your eyes rather quickly.  This will lead to intermittent symptoms of eye dryness - such as foreign body sensations, light sensitivity, and mild irritation as well as redness

Severe dry eyes occur when you have little to no oil in your tears

Depletion of the oil layer happens when you have unhealthy oil glands (meibomian glands).  This can be due to excessively staring at screens or systemic problems such as autoimmune diseases.  This also happens with age

For mild to moderate eye dryness, artificial tears can and should be used around the clock

In some circumstances, a prescription eye drop may be needed

Tear film oil deficiency due to unhealthy or poorly functioning meibomian glands is the leading cause of severe dry eyes

In early cases - application of warm compresses can help

In more progressed stages - these poorly functioning glands can be targeted by the TearCare® clinical procedure in order to unblock, unclog, and restore function to your meibomian glands

TearCare®treatment was able to improve tear break up time (a measure of tear film stability) from  3 seconds to 11 seconds in a large multicenter randomized controlled clinical study (Gupta et al. 2022),  and in a separate clinical study demonstrated that the improvement in symptoms remained effective for at least 6 months in chronic and severe eye dryness (Badawi, 2018)

The medical literature currently suggests improvements in the signs and symptoms of MGD after IPL therapy. Toyos(2015)  treated patients with IPL showing improvement of dry eye disease symptomatology in 93% of cases and clinical signs in 87%. Vora and Gupta(2015) reported improvement of lid margin edema, in the meibum quality score, and found a significant increase in the oil flow score and tear film break-up time, and a decrease in ocular surface disease index scoring. Craig et al(2015) demonstrated that IPL alone was effective in improving the lipid layer and patient symptoms.