As we have discussed before if you are suffering from dry eyes and you go to the chemist there is literally a wall of options.

So how do you choose? Ask the pharmacist? Ask the sixteen year old behind the counter?  Believe it or not this is what happens a lot of the time!

Before choosing eye drops it is actually important to have them prescribed for your particular type of dry eyes. There are two main types:

1. Aqueous deficiency

2. Lipid deficiency

Often it is a combination of both with eye allergies and in-complete blinking thrown in for good measure.

At The Eye Practice we take Dry Eyes seriously and make sure we are clear with what is contributing to your problem.  Rarely will we prescribe dry eye drops that are in a bottle.  Why?  They are loaded with preservatives – why would you want them in your eyes?  Dry Eyes typically are inflamed and sore. Preservatives actually cause inflammation so do not get bottled eye drops.  Insist on non-preserved ampules. You can reuse an ampule for the whole day as long as the tip does not touch anything that might contaminate it.

Now that we are clear about not using preserved drops what is next?  We need to classify whether we need water based drops or oil based drops depending on the type of dry eyes that are present.  From previous posts we know that the majority of dry eyes are in fact oil deficient. A recent study showed that 86% of patients presenting to a specialty clinic for dry eye treatment had some form of oil deficiency.

Only recently a NON-PRESERVED oil based eye drop called ARTELAC by Bausch & Lomb has been released that shows tremendous promise in treating most cases of dry eyes.

We now have this unique product in stock. Call us on (02) 9290 1899 for a supply OR better still come in and get your eyes looked at so that we can work out what type of dry eyes you have so we can treat them appropriately.