In November, Precision Eye Care, a full-service eye care center in Vancouver, announced that it was the first in the Vancouver area to introduce a new treatment for patients who suffer from Evaporative Dry Eye disease.
Evaporative Dry Eye disease stems from a deficiency in the oily layer of the eye’s natural tear film. The oily lipids serve as a protective layer so that the eye’s tear film does not evaporate. Precision Eye Care introduced a new, advanced in-office treatment, called Lipiflow, which is intended to treat patients with meibomian gland dysfunction (a common result of patients suffering from dry eye disease), by unblocking the glands and allowing them to resume the secretion of oily lipids needed for a healthy tear film.
Since introducing the treatment at Precision Eye Care, Dr. Judy Chan, optometrist at the center, said they’ve been seeing a lot of people who suffer from the dry eye disease.
“We brought in this new technology because we continued to see more and more of our patients complain about it (dry eye),” Chan said. “There wasn’t really anything we could except say, ‘put some drops in.’”
Chan said there are two common symptoms for Evaporative Dry Eye disease that people can watch one. The first one is the more obvious symptom of feeling like your eyes are dry and sandy, or maybe like there is something in them. A second less obvious symptom of dry eye is a person’s eyes watering excessively. Chan said this excessive watering happens when someone doesn’t have enough maintenance tears and their eyes start to dry out, triggering the reflex to water.
“Another thing people don’t realize is that there are so many different causes of dry eye,” Chan said. “As we’ve started looking into this more, one of the things we’re finding is that in about 50 percent of patients, they actually have dry eye because their eyes don’t close completely (when they’re sleeping). Other causes can be environmental, diet and hormonal. A lot of people who have dry eye don’t understand why they have to come in to the office for a visit. They say, ‘I know I have dry eye, why can’t you just treat it?’ We need to know why they have it.”
In order to diagnose dry eye and find out the cause, the doctors at Precision Eye Care use Lipiview, which videotapes a patients blinking habits in order to determine what might be causing the dry eye. Lipiflow is the machine that is used to most accurately treat patients with certain diagnoses. The LipiFlow Activator, a single-use sterile device, safely and comfortably delivers automated therapeutic energies to each meibomian gland while protecting the delicate structures of the patient’s eye.
“When your oils don’t come out of your oil glands properly, it’s like letting it sit and it solidifies and hardens,” Chan said. “The Lipiflow heats your lids up and gets it flowing again. It’s kind of like a spa treatment, it feels really nice and it only takes 12 minutes.”
Aside from the Lipiflow treatment, Chan said they can also give patients an ointment to use at night if they don’t close their eyes all the way while sleeping. Although they can necessarily change people’s blinking habits, Chan said they can help teach patients to blink more completely and more often. She said people who are in front of computers a lot during the day are especially prone to not blinking enough or completely, as well as people who maybe read a lot or are often concentrating on something for long periods of time.
Another thing that Chan pointed out that she sees a lot of people who suffer from dry eye doing wrong is using Visine.
“A lot of people, their eyes are uncomfortable, so the first thing they do is grab for some Visine,” she said. “That’s one of the worst things you can do if you have dry eye. Visine is used to take the red out of your eyes, it’s an antihistamine, so what does it do? It dries out your eyes.”
If people suffering from Evaporative Dry Eye disease don’t get it treated, Chan said that since those oil glands are live tissue, if they’re blocked up and something doesn’t get them flowing again, they could essentially atrophy and die. Once that live tissue is gone, it doesn’t come back.
Precision Eye Care is located at 8400 NE Vancouver Mall Loop, Suite 110, Vancouver. Contact the office at (360) 254-5855 or visit their website, www.pecps.com.
