Dry Eye: IPL Treatment

04/26/2024

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Dry eye is a chronic pathology consisting in insufficient quantity of tears and/or deterioration in their quality, causing inflammation of the surface of the eye. Tears are essential to lubricate the surface of the eye, provide it with nutrients, and protect it from infection. In this chapter, we talk with Dr. Ruben Delgado about some basic questions about dry eye and the treatments we offer at Barraquera.

• What is dry eye?
• What types of dry eyes are there?
• Why does this pathology occur?
• What can be done to prevent this?
• What treatments do we offer in Barraquera?
• Why is intense pulsed light treatment so interesting?
• How is the treatment carried out?
• Can a patient lead a completely normal life after IPL treatment?
• If a family member suffers from dry eyes, is there a chance that I will have it too?
• Can patients diagnosed with dry eye lead completely normal lives?
• What recommendations can we give to patients with dry eyes to improve their daily life?

In the chapter Dry eyes: IPL treatment No. 13 On our Rest Your Sight podcast, we spoke with Dr. Ruben Delgado, an ophthalmologist at the Barraquera Eye Center, to clear up concerns about dry eye and provide the information you need to make the correct diagnosis and offer the best treatment in each case. It also explains what intense pulsed light therapy consists of and how it is performed.

Why does this pathology occur?

Dry eyes are typically multifactorial. There are several factors that influence its occurrence: age, gender, immunological factors or various types of pathologies can cause different types of dry eye. There is water deficiency syndrome of dry eye, that is, in patients with a small amount of tears; Evaporative dry eye syndrome, in which the tear quality is not good enough, as well as mixed dry eye syndrome: patients who have a small amount of tears and they are of poor quality.

What can be done to prevent this?

Common symptoms of dry eyes (gritty feeling, red eyes, heaviness, etc.) can be corrected by using artificial tears. On the other hand, it is also important to try to avoid these symptoms by knowing what factors can cause them: air conditioners, heaters, very windy environments, very intense heat, etc. Dry eye patients can avoid such environments to avoid suffering from dry eye symptoms eye.

What is intense pulsed light treatment?

Intense pulsed light treatment helps us improve the quality of the patient’s own tears, the tears that continually smear the tear film and which we are most interested in improving. Pulsed light reduces inflammation of the glands located on the edge of the eyelid, which are responsible for the production of fat. Especially in patients with evaporative dry eye syndrome, this fat becomes more solidified, and with the help of pulsed light we achieve a slight reduction in the inflammation of the gland in question, achieving a more liquid fat.

We invite you to listen to this podcast chapter to uncover some basic concerns about dry eyes, and we remind you that you can send us your eye health concerns on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #DescansaLaVista so that we can address them in the following chapters.