Dry, irritated, itchy eyes can really affect your daily life. Now there's a new way to treat them.
A few years ago, Susan Tomkin's eyes started to drive her crazy, "My eyes were dry, and itchy, and red, a little red. And I just noticed that it wasn't so comfortable anymore."
Susan's ophthalmologist diagnosed her with dry eye syndrome. It's more common as we age. "But with contact lens wear, with laser vision correction, certainly the younger age population is not immune from dry eye symptoms," says Dr. Christopher Coad.
Eye drops can ease symptoms, but can't fix the problem. Now, intense pulsed light therapy is making an impact. "And it really came about from, again, people, mainly in the derm field using ipl for rosacea and other skin conditions reporting that their dry eye has improved," according to Dr. Coad.
He says the light is directed under the lower lid, targeting glands involved in tear film production - not at the eye itself, "So the IPL is not only warming up the glands, kind of an intense warm compress for a short period of time to help those glands work a little bit better, but it's also coagulating or sealing some of those blood vessels carrying the inflammatory modulators that are causing some of the dry eye symptoms."
Most patients need four to six treatments. This is susan's second, and already she likes what she sees, "I'm using drops far less than I was, maybe two or three times a day instead of every couple of hours."
Dr. Coad says 99-percent of his dry eye patients experience improvement in their symptoms after the series of treatments. Repeat sessions are on an as-needed basis, but some people come back sooner because they like how youthful their skin looks afterward. This procedure is not covered by insurance and costs between $200 and $400 per treatment.
