Restasis - inflammation

[nitrodrops]

Hi All,

Understand Restasis helps to cure inflammation.

1. How does the dry eye specialist determine if eyes are inflammed?

2. If inflammed has stopped, should i continue using Restasis even though DES still exists?


Cheers

[poppy]

The eye doc can see the inflammation easily when they examine your eyes. I don't know exactly how.

If you've previously had inflammation and the restasis has kept it under control, and you have chronic dry eye, then you should keep taking the restasis or the inflammation will come back. And restasis takes a long time to work and control inflamation, so you don't want to just stop and end up back at the begininning again.

You can have inflammation even when you eyes feel OK, so unless the eye doc says you have no inflammation you should also not stop your treatment.

[Schatten]

I can tell ya how to see this:

a) inner eye lids are red instead of pink, you can probably see enhanced vasculariation

b) you can see blood vessels creeping across the surface towards the center of the eye

c) the symptoms the patient tells you

You see you don't even need stuff like BUT or Schirmer's to determine wether an eye is dry or not, you can see it already through a slit lamp examination.

Note: This is just my personal experience, many eye doctors have 5 minutes/patient and thus can't examine as thouroughly as other specialists from university clinics in my country.

[indrep]

Restasis acts only as an antiinflammatory agent. It does not cure inflammation. As long as the tear film is hypertonic (too salty) then the inflammatory response is constant. The only way to remove the primary cause of inflammation is to restore balance in the tear film. This requires individual treatment modalities and time.

[littlemermaid]

Indrep, immunosuppressant Restasis (ciclosporin) bad idea with active bacterial infection in MGs, correct?

[Ahmed]

cyclosporins (restasis) reduce the body's repsonse to inflammation, so conditions that are auto immune that can go on to give dry eyes, will still be there, but the body will respond less.

Its the body's response to the condition which causes the dryness, not the underlying condition. As regard to your specific question, inflammation can effect the eye's in different ways, two typical ways are either surface dryness/iritation or inflammation within the eye which is Iritis. The eye care professional should be able to check for both and give you an idea of whats going on.

regards,

Ahmed.

[indrep]

Littlemermaid, I think that may be a contraindication. I am out of my office and do not have the package insert with me. I will check next week when I am back.

[littlemermaid]

Thanks, indrep. We're not using it till I'm sure it doesn't impede the ability to fight bacterial infection.

Ahmed, are you a practising optometrist in post-LASIK dry eye management?