Ms Jojo (F/40) came with redness on her left eye few weeks ago. She didn’t have a pair of glasses with updated power to wear, and she couldn’t wear her contact lens. We made a pair of glasses of power -700 for her to wear temporarily.. based on her old glasses power, her current contact lens power and her feedback on her vision.. as power may not be accurate having red eye while she went to her doctor.
We advised her to use non-preservative artificial tears to continuously irrigate/splash & moist her eyes. She came back last week and red eye has subsided.
Upon examination, her vision keeps fluctuating and she said her eyes are very tired. Her vision is blurry but reported to be clear after blinking, this indicates dry eye. Eye blink will spread tears on the cornea, cornea is moist, so she sees clear vision (cornea is the front part of our eyes). When cornea is dry back again, she sees blurry vision. She wears contact lens every day for long hours as her power is very high and she doesn’t have a pair of glasses to wear after removing her lenses. Under long period of time that your eyes are lack of oxygen, now she has growth of blood vessel onto her cornea, termed as corneal neovascularisation (cornea is transparent in nature with no blood vessel). This is because her cornea is trying to get oxygen from surrounding blood vessel as her extended wear of contact lens blocks cornea from getting oxygen from the environment. She also has some defect/dry spot on the surface of her cornea shown in fluorescein/dye test. Cells from our cornea can regenerate/heal itself from defect/dry spot in a week, so using artificial tears continuously to lubricate the cornea and off from contact lens will help cornea to heal optimally.
We advise her to keep using non-preservative artificial tears regularly every day, and totally off from contact lens for a week. Whenever she feels her eyes are dry/tired/stinging or discomfort, use artificial tears, even if you need to use more than 1-2 vial/small tube in a single day. As it does not contain preservative, it is safe to be frequently used on our eyes.
We will see her again this weekend.
Ms Jojo is about Grade 2 of corneal neovascularisation in need of continuous use of non-preserved artificial tears now.. when her dry eye gets better, she needs to use high oxygen lens while also reduce wearing time & recommended to take 2days off in a week from contact lens
#ContactLens #RedEye