BLOG: AQI: The New Dry Eye Index
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Key takeaways:
- The low air quality from Canadian wildfires has resulted in an uptick of eye discomfort.
- Unhealthy air quality may be particularly uncomfortable for patients with dry eye disease.
Apparently, it’s time for us to add another index to our DED armamentarium.
We have been making do with the OSDI, SPEED, SANDE, and VAS for many years now. Recently, however, I have noticed an episodic increase in the volume and severity of our requests for urgent clinic visits due to new or worsening eye discomfort. In my never-ending search for ways that we can both explain and quantify the variables we encounter as DED doctors I think I’ve discovered a new one, the AQI.
Image: Adobe Stock
That’s right, the Air Quality Index!
Have you seen the pictures of downtown Chicago this week? How about that yucky yellow fog that enveloped Manhattan a couple of weeks ago? Smoke from massive Canadian wildfires have been flowing across our eyeballs for weeks now. It’s getting kinda silly; we had our back slider open last week, and the smoke detectors inside our house all went off! Scared the bejeebus out of our dogs.
Today’s AQI is 273* here in Cleveland, well into the “Severely Unhealthy” range. There’s an acrid quality to the smoke which I think is why so many of our DED patients are ringing our phones. As you may remember I have had symptomatic dry eye since my mid-20’s. Even with the air on “recirculate” in my car this morning my eyes were burning cauldrons of misery by the time I completed my short commute.
Besides increased awareness I’m not sure that there’s one single thing that we should be using to combat this Canadian “invasion.” I’m trying to dilute the particulate matter in my eyes with non-preserved tears, perhaps the only real indication for teardrops now that I think of it. I can see a place for a steroid pulse, treating this as one might any other symptomatic flare. As a DED patient I can tell you that this particular struggle is real, with only one solution.
Come on, jet stream!
*Air Quality Index:
Good 0-50
Moderate 51-100
Unhealthy 101-150
Very Unhealthy 151-200
Severely Unhealthy 200-300
Hazardous 301-500
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