Dry Eye Treatment

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Dry Eye Shouldn’t Impact Your Daily Life

Dry eye disease can be more than uncomfortable; it can be damaging to your eyes and affect the quality of your vision. Abbey Eye Care takes a customized approach to diagnosing and treating dry eye disease. With a series of targeted diagnostic tests and a careful case history, we can better determine the cause(s) of your dry eye. This insightful approach allows us to target your treatment to help get at the underlying cause of your symptoms rather than just the symptoms themselves. Book your appointment online.

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Causes of Dry Eye Disease

Dry eye disease develops as a result of one of two problems: poor tear quality or insufficient tear volume

Sometimes, the body does not produce enough tears to keep the eye moist and lubricated. Other times, the body does produce enough tears; however, there may not be enough oil (called meibum) to create a moisture locking seal on the surface of the eye. Without enough meibum in your tear film, the watery component evaporates from the eye’s surface too quickly, causing dryness. The most common cause of dry eye disease is a problem with the glands that produce the meibum that keeps the eyes moist and comfortable.

  • Dryness
  • Irritation (burning or itching sensation)
  • Redness
  • Stringy discharge
  • Foreign body sensation in the eye
  • Tearing or watery eyes
  • Sensitivity to light
  • Excess glare (particularly when driving at night)
  • Blurry vision
  • Eye fatigue
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In Office Treatments

LipiFlow©

LipiFlow has been our foundational in office treatment for our dry eye patients for the past few years.

How does LipiFlow© work?

LipiFlow© is an in-office treatment that uses small, soft silicone applicators to treat MGD (meibomian gland dysfunction). The meibomian glands are the oil glands found in our eye lids. The device applies gentle heat and soothing massage to warm and unclog meibomian gland blockages. This improves the gland function and can offer long term relief for MGD. It has been found to be significantly more effective than other heat based treatments.  A systematic review of the literature has found that LipiFlow© can significantly improve gland function and alleviate dry eye symptoms in most patients.
It is FDA and Health Canada approved for treatment of moderate to severe dry eye disease.

Tell me about the procedure

With the LipiFlow© procedure, applicators are applied to each eye. The applicators cover both the inside and the outside of the eye lids. The procedure takes 12 mins in total. The eye lids are heated to 42.5C and then are gently massaged/expressed. This temperature has been shown to melt the oil inside the meibomian glands. The melting and the massage from the applicators allows the stagnant oil in the glands to be melted and expressed. This improves the function of the oil glands so they can produce better more robust oil to cover the surface of the eye.

How many treatments do I need?

LipiFlow© is a one time treatment. 85% of patients treated with LipiFlow© notice an improvement in their dry eye symptoms. This improvement typically lasts for 12 – 24 months. Often times LipiFlow© is repeated at some point in the future to help keep dry eye symptoms at bay.

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Dry eye disease can be impacted by blepharitis; an infection and irritation of the eyelid. BlephEx and AB Max can treat and prevent blepharitis and related dry eye symptoms by cleaning the eyelid and removing the source of the infection. A BlephEx or AB Max treatment takes place in our office with the use of a small, gentle handheld cleaning tool. It also does a great job of cleaning the meibomian gland openings, allowing the meibum (oil) to flow freely.

Xiidra, Restasis and Cequa are medicated eye drops prescribed to sufferers of dry eye disease. In addition to offering immediate relief of symptoms, These prescription drops also help stimulate your body’s natural tear production and are only available by prescription.

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Diagnostics

At Abbey Eye Care we are fortunate enough to be able to image the meibomian glands (oil glands of the eyelids). Meibomian gland dysfunction is the leading cause of dry eye and LipiScan allows us to identify and treat it.

Using a special diagnostic tool called an I-PEN, we can determine the cause of your dry eye. The I-PEN measures your tear osmolarity, which tells us if there is an imbalance in your tears. This insight allows us to treat the underlying cause of your dry eye rather than just the symptoms themselves. We can also track this important metric over time to see how your treatment is progressing.