Dermatological treatment may have application as dry eye therapy

NAPLES, Italy — A new alternative treatment using intense pulse light and broadband light is showing promise in treating dry eye syndrome from non-autoimmune etiology, according to a study presented here.

Intense pulse light and broadband light are more commonly used in dermatology to treat skin conditions such as rosacea.

"We started administering this treatment in our aesthetic clinic in Memphis and found that our patients had some beneficial collateral effects on dry eye symptoms," Rolando Toyos, MD, said at the joint meeting of Ocular Surgery News and the Italian Society of Ophthalmology.

Since then, he started investigating the rationale for application of the same light treatment for dry eye.

"The treatment improves the function of meibomian gland function, which is notoriously correlated with the formation of the tear film's lipid layer," Dr. Toyos said.

Patients receive treatment in four selected facial areas. Tear break-up time and Schirmer's tests are performed during the first visit to establish baseline values before first treatment, before all subsequent treatments, and at 1, 3 and 6 months after completion of the treatment to assess the efficacy on dry eye symptoms. An average of four to five monthly treatments are usually necessary to achieve stable results, he said.

"In our patients, we found an average increase of [tear break-up time] of 47% and 33% with [intense pulse light] and [broadband light], respectively, and an increase of 60% with [intense pulse light] and 84% with [broadband light] for Schirmer's test," Dr. Toyos said.