VIDEO: Education important to prevent dry eye in pediatric patients

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

We have to really start to pay attention to our younger children. Now we know with screen usage — this has been well documented now with the amount of time we spend, like I’m doing right now, staring at a little green light in my computer — our kids are looking at iPhones and iPads and computers with school all day long. And if you look at the blink reflex, 60% to 70% reduction of a blink reflex when you’re looking at an iPhone or an iPad or some type of digital device. And that’s scary, but it’s real. And this is why we’re starting to see a lot more meibomian gland dropout, even in people and kids who are young teenagers. What that can do is, of course, cause an unstable tear film much earlier in life. And you have kids now coming in in teenage years, in their college years, with symptoms of ocular surface disease.

I think one of the biggest things we can do is educate our young children on how important it is to actually do the whole 20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. It sounds simple, but things like that, just say, hey, if you’re going to be on your screen, just every once in a while, close your eyes, make sure you blink, hold your phone away from you a little bit there, put it down, things like that. Sounds obvious, but it’s really important because I think the more we can help prevent loss of those glands, the better chance we have. But of course, identifying early on when patients come in for their yearly eye exams, start to ask them. Do some meibography. Start asking them symptoms of, does your vision come and go? Contact lens intolerance — a lot of our optometry colleagues will tell us that we’re seeing a lot more contact lens intolerance early on. Why? Well, if they have significant loss, some meibomian glands, ocular surface disease, dry eye, we’re starting to see that. Well, that’s the reason why, because they’re actually having some more inflammatory cascades. So treat them with cyclosporine or lifitegrast (Xiidra, Bausch + Lomb) or artificial tears. Take away some of the contact lenses for a while. Do a contact lens holiday. Make sure we treat those meibomian glands. All simple things we can do that can help prevent them from progressing over time. So, education is key. Early identification, asking patients and thinking about why they may have these symptoms like contact lens intolerance all can help them long term.