Regimen change cuts eye drops use in half

Nerve damage associated ocular dryness improved dramatically with hyaluronic acid-based lubricating eye drops explains Claes Feinbaum M.Sc. Professor Emeritus Optometry, Vision4You, Lund, Sweden.

"Almost five years after experiencing facialis paresis on the right side of her face, our 56-year old female patient was still having severe feelings of dry eye because of incomplete lid closure that remained after loss of facial muscle motor function.

"Initially, we performed punctual occlusion in both upper and lower puncta to preserve tears, and prescribed Systane artificial tears during waking hours and LacriLube at night. The patient needed to administer Systane 10 to 12 times per day in order to achieve a modicum of comfort. This rate of instillation suggests that the tear substitute efficacy is of short duration and is therefore an insufficient solution. The patient's visual acuity was acceptable at 20/30, but because of dryness-related blurring the quality of vision was low.

"We decided to switch the patient to a high molecular weight lubricating eye drop to see if she could achieve improvement in comfort or quality of vision. Five minutes after administration of blink Intensive Tears, the patient reported immediate relief and said that her vision had improved in the right eye. One hour after administration of blink Intensive Tears, the patient stated that she was comfortable and had no dry eye feelings or irritation and reported further improvement in vision. Three hours after administration of blink Intensive Tear, the patient had a complete absence of ocular irritation and reported that she had excellent visual quality in her right eye.

"The patient's regimen now is blink Intensive Tears four to five times daily with no ointment at night. Since switching to blink Intensive Tears, the patient uses at least 50% fewer eye drops than she previously used with the Systane regimen. With the new regimen, her visual acuity in the right eye is 20/20 with excellent quality. The patient is extremely happy with the gains that she has made in comfort and quality of vision, as well as with the reduced frequency of eye drop instillation."