Schirmer's test results

[patrick]

Hi all,

Could someone here maybe help me identifying some schirmers test results?
I'd appreciate that very much.
Today i went through some older test results i still have laying around in the files i keep of all my doctors appointments.
Since opthalmologists here do have the bad habit to very poorly explain what certain things really mean i just thought i try it here.
These results are 2 years old though. But i think nothing much changed in the last two years anyway.
Okay, here they are :
- schirmer 1: od 21mm and os 14mm after 5 minutes.
- schirmer 2: od 12mm and os 8 mm after 5 minutes. (This was after some numbing drops were applied to my eyes).
What could be the conclusion of these results? What does it say about the severity of any aqueous deficiency?
Is there any deficiency at all? I just don't know.

Any input is very welcome!

Patrick...

[bakunin]

One of the possible conclusions is that schirmer is not reliable.

I'v heard about so many differences among schirmer results... Well, all doctors failed with me, so I think almost all of them don't know waht they are doing.

[dryasadesert]

normal to slightly dry based on the second test but simply could be due to numbing drops....if you have symptoms it is probably MGD and evaporative not aqueous....

mine for instance are 0 and 1 without numbing after 5 minutes which is severe.

[robster]

An average Schirmer is in the 12mm-14mm range so I would second what dryasadesert says about your results being on the low end of the average spectrum. From those results I would say it's most likely that your dry eye is caused by evaporative dry eye which is the case for most people. Do you know what your TBUT is? This would give a very good indication as to whether your issue is evaporative dry eye.

[patrick]

Hi,and thanks for your replies!

Of course i am well aware that the schirmer's test is notoriously unreliable,but they peform the test here in the netherlands as a standard part of dry eye diagnosis anyway. I was not told what the figures of the test exactly mean other than; hmm,could be worse.. Which in the respect of aqueous deficiency it indeed could i guess.
On another occasion the osmolarity of my tear layer was measured as well with the tearlab devise and the outcome was 293. Again, i was not told what this means. I of course asked the lady who peformed the test,but she said; could be worse. That's it. I did not know where i am exactly in the spectrum of dry eye. It turns out it is on the low end of average.
Hopefully the amount of tears is not going to decrease any further very fast,because i can't use that at all.however,since i am in my early 40's now i expect the amount is going to decrease anyway due to the proces of aging that is going to kick in the decade that lies ahead.
It is true my symptoms are for the most part caused by evaporative dry eye. I do have mgd and my tbut's used to be around two to three seconds. Initially my glands were totally clogged and tend to just clog up again in a matter of days after they were manually expressed. How frustrating!
I've been on doxy since six weeks now and at my last check up two weeks ago the tbut's were between 10 and 15 seconds. This is the first time in my 5 year long dry eye nightmare the tbut's were raised this substantially.
However,symptoms are still present despite this improvement. Hopefully over time the symtpoms will disappear too.


Patrick...