Dry eye causes symptoms of burning, irritation, redness, watering, and foreign body sensation. It is worse in middle-aged females and symptoms are worse toward the end of the day.
There is a canal that goes from your eyes to your nose. Every time you blink, you pump tears away from your eyes and they drain into the nose. If we can plug the opening of those canals, we can keep your natural tears on your eyes longer, significantly decreasing discomfort from dry eye.
Plugs are easy and painless to insert. We try collagen plugs first. These collagen plugs dissolve over a 3-5 day period, during which you can see if your symptoms decreased. If you feel better, we put in permanent plugs (although they can be removed easily). Again, this is a simple and painless procedure that we do here in the clinic.
The picture below shows the cap of a plug that was inserted in the lower opening. The lower lid has been manually pulled away from the eyeball for demonstration purposes.
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