14 Jan An Ode To Eye Drops For Cataract and Laser Eye Surgery
Eye Drops to Help You Heal Your Eyes
One of the great things about being an ophthalmologist is that you can use eye drops to help your patients after cataract and laser surgery. That may seem like a small blessing, but think about it for a minute.
General doctors give you pills to treat your medical conditions. If you have a problem with your liver, they give you a pill by mouth. The drug goes everywhere throughout your body where it can cause multiple side effects when the doctor really only wants it in the liver.
An optometrist can have you drip drops directly right where you want them. Very little gets absorbed into the rest of the body.
Let’s say we want to treat an infection in your cornea. You can drip medication right on the cornea and we can reach a very high concentrations of antibiotic right where we want it.
If, on the other hand, we had to give you the antibiotics by mouth, we would have to give you massive amounts that would go throughout your body in the hopes that the same amount of drug would end up in the cornea. This level of antibiotics would be toxic and harmful to the rest of the body.
Local Side Effects From Eye Drops for Cataract and Laser Eye Surgery
If you do have a side effect from an eye drop it tends to only affect the area right around the eyes. For example, if you you develop an allergy to an eye drop, it usually only affects the eyes and the eyelids. There are exceptions to this, but compare it to an allergic reaction from a pill where the drug is expected to have spread widely throughout your entire body.
It is rare for eye drops to cause systemic problems, but is can happen, so please make your other doctors aware of the drop medication that you take.
Disadvantage of Eye Drops
Eye Drops can sting, irritate, and dry your eyes. Pills can dry your eyes, but do not usually cause direct irritation.
Drop medications are not perfect, but I hope you can see why they are an optometrist’s best fiend. For that matter, they are your best friend when you are having vision troubles. They offer all these same advantages when used after your Laser Eye Surgery or after your cataract surgery.
If you have any questions or comments about eye drops, please leave a comment or contact me at my office.
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