Manual expression: how painful?

[spmcc]

Lizlou,

Going back to your original question on how painful is lid expression... Korb and Blackie have an article from 2011 in which they write that "Only 7% of the patients could tolerate the pressure necessary to administer complete therapeutic expression along the entire lower eyelid."

See pubmed abstract here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21617536

Of course, anesthetic drops or injection should help make the experience more tolerable! I'm glad you got through it... I hope you'll update on how the next expression goes in 6-8 weeks. Fingers crossed there's improvement over time.

[lizlou29]

Thanks spmcc, yes I will update.

It was from watching Dr. Korb's lecture that was posted somewhere on here (sorry, I'm away on holiday so don't have time to search for the link) that made me question if manual expression would be too painful. He said something along the lines of "if dry eye patients had their glands manually expressed then they'd really know what pain was". I guess manual MG expression isn't what he was wanting to promote though strange how a lot of people now have the manual expression after Lipiflow.

My eyelids were sore for a couple of days after but not as bad as after I had Lipiflow. I think the heat from the Lipiflow was too much for my sensitive eyelids (ocular rosacea).