Advanced Eye Care
Intense Pulsed Light for Dry Eye
Your meibomian glands control the lipids in the eye, called meibum, which combine with oil, mucus and water to lubricate your eyes. Meibomian Gland Dysfunction, MGD, occurs when the meibomian glands fail to provide enough meibum. This can cause the eyes to feel dry and uncomfortable. MGD causes 80% of dry eye.
Those with dry eye may be interested to know that intense pulsed light, IPL, can be helpful in alleviating symptoms. This is considered to be a ground-breaking treatment. When combined with meibomian gland expression, most patients’ symptoms improved more than 50 percent. These results are based on a study performed by the Mayo Clinic, and published in 2016.
The Procedure
At the first treatment, slit-lamp examination and meibography is performed. Patient’s skin is evaluated using Fitzpatrick grading and a test patch is performed. Adjustments are made after assessing how well the light energy is absorbed and by skin response. After administering IPL, we will express oil from the glands, which restores the normal oil flow in the tear film. It is generally recommended patients undergo an initial series of four IPL treatments, performed 4 weeks apart. This ensures long-term success in treating both chronic dry eye syndrome and Meibomian Gland Dysfunction.
Depending on the severity of your dry eye condition, occasional maintenance treatments following the initial series of IPL treatments may be required. It is not unusual to combine IPL treatments with other dry eye therapies in order to optimize effectiveness and promote healing.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Scratchy sensations, itching and burning, redness, watery eyes, blurry vision.
The two major types of DED are aqueous tear deficiency (ATD) and evaporative dry eye. The latter, which is linked to meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), is the most common form and results in your tears evaporating too quickly.
Your tears play an important part of protecting your eyes and your vision. Untreated dry eye can lead to corneal scarring or increased eye infections. Additionally, discomfort or pain from dry eye can lead to poor sleep quality and mood disorders.
Dry eye results from a variety of causes, but aging is the single highest factor. Women suffer from dry about twice as frequently as men, often because of hormonal changes, certain medications, wearing contact lenses and using eye makeup.
The first task in evaluating dry eye is to determine which type of dry eye you have. Solutions may include artifical tears and warm compresses for mild cases of dry eye, sometimes medications can be used to increase tear production, other treatments are designed to unblock meibomian glands so they may increase meibum secretion. Underlying causes of dry eye like inflammation or rosacea are treated using intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy. We offer a variety of treatments to best address your particular needs.