Dry eye or Keratoconjunctivitis sicca, to give its medical name is a very common complaint, so why is it that many people live in misery because they can’t get relief for their dry eyes? I’m going to be talking a lot more about dry eyes on this channel and in the series but before we can talk about the causes and the treatment for dry eyes, we must establish, first of all, what type of dry eye you have is. The good news is that there are only two main categories of dry eye problems based on the health of your tears. Let’s talk about it.
For many years now, I felt that dry eye has been one of the most common yet widely misunderstood problems that we as eye care professionals have to deal with. A good indication of the scale of the issue can be found by just taking a look at the huge global industry around dry eye products and therapies, don’t get me wrong, these products are needed but you’d think that surely with all this choice of products dry eye, must be a condition that is well catered for and in fact need not be a problem in this day and age.
The reality is that we just a little bit of digging around you’ll find that many people that live with and suffer in silence because of their dry eye problems, and worse still, there are many people out there who are really sinking into depression as a result of the misery that dry eye causes them.
In this three-part mini-series on making sense of dry eye treatment. I’m going to be unpacking the problem and we’ll also be looking at the causes and the best strategies for treatment. So just make sure you subscribe to the channel and that way you don’t get to miss the series.
So what exactly is dry eye?
Well, it’s very simple, and yet it’s a complex problem all at the same time and in this blog, I’m going to be keeping it simple and in subsequent videos, will uncover a little bit more about the problem and also the treatment.
Now, we could just simply say that dry eye is a condition where your eyes are dry and that’s the end of that, as many definitions that you perhaps might find online will do. However, my tip for a better understanding of the problem of dry eye is to define and concentrate on the medical name of dry eye, which I believe holds the key to how we manage and treat dry eyes. Medically dry eye is known as Keratoconjunctivitis sicca often abbreviated to KCS.
So what does that mean?
Well, if we break it down, we find that four keywords make up the name and those words are Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca.
- Kerato is the medical name for the cornea. That is the front lines of the eye.
- Conjunctiv refers to conjunctiva, which is the transparent skin that lines the white of the eye and wraps to cover the inside of the eyelids.
- Itis is a medical postfix name to indicate inflammation, so any condition that ends in Itis is an inflammatory condition. Examples include Iritis, Sinusitis, Arthritis, and so on.
- Sicca is derived from the Latin word, a siccus meaning dry.
Now when we put all that together, we then have the word Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca which quite literally means corneal conjunctiva inflammation caused by dryness.
So the important takeaway from the name is that the fact that the main problem to overcome with dry eye is not just one of dryness but one of inflammation. The most important word to remember is the name Kerato-Conjunctiv-Itis-Sicca is the word Itis or inflammation. The reason for this is because it is so often overlooked in unsuccessful dry eye treatments, there will be more on this as we go through the other blog post in the series.
Now, the other thing that I want to hit on is the fact that while the dry eye can be a complex condition, all dry eye problems will fall into one of only two simple categories.
So your dry eye is either an Evaporative dry eye or it’s an Aqueous deficient dry eye. So what does all of that mean?
Evaporative dry eye is the problem of your tears evaporating way too quickly, resulting in dry patches on the cornea and the conjunctiva that are not getting good coverage with tears.
Aqueous deficient dry eye, on the other hand, is the problem that arises because your eyes simply are not producing enough water, which then results in dryness of the cornea and the Conjunctiva. This is all significant because the longer the dryness goes on, the more inflammation arises, along with all of the uncomfortable symptoms associated with dry eyes.
Now, of the two categories of dry eyes, aqueous deficient dry eye is by far the most serious and the most difficult to treat as well. In my experience, dry eye sufferers tend to be in three camps that dry eye symptoms fall in.
- So first of all, we have those that complain mainly of a watery dry eye. I know this sounds contradictory, but it’s a common one.
- Then you have those that mainly report blurry dry eyes.
- Finally you have those that report a stubborn dry eye and most or all the previous symptoms along with extreme discomfort.
So in the next video, I’ll go into more detail and also explain the causes and why this is critical to understanding how we go about treating and managing dry eyes.
Thank you, and I look forward to catching you on my next blog.
Take care.
