Speaker: Engaging tear creation is key to dry eye quandary

ATLANTA – Artificial tears are an effective way to alleviate a patient’s dry eye symptoms, but if the core inflammatory problem is not addressed, the patient’s condition will only worsen, according to a presenter here at SECO.

"When you make a therapeutic decision to treat your patients, the question is whether you are going to help them make real tears or put in a tear that’s only going to work for a short time," Marc Bloomenstein, OD, FAAO, asked attendees of the Allergan-sponsored symposium.

"Dry eye is an inflammatory condition," Bloomenstein said, and the cycle of inflammation must be broken.

"When the eye is irritated, it induces inflammation, which causes a disruption in the innervation of nerves to the lacrimal gland, which then produces inflammatory mediators that are then released onto the epithelial surface of the cornea. So irritation induces inflammation and inflammation induces dry eye, which causes more inflammation," he said.

Artificial tears do nothing but lubricate the eyes; they do not create new tears, Bloomenstein said.

"We’re trying to stabilize probably the most important surface of the eye. At the end of the day, the quality of our patients’ vision is still the most important thing," he said.