Dry Eye Diagnostics in Okotoks

Are You Struggling with Dry Eyes?

Dry eye is one of the most common eye conditions patients face worldwide and can happen for various reasons. Because of this, we use the latest in dry eye diagnosis technology to help ensure your eyes are getting the care you deserve.

Are you struggling with dry eyes? Please contact our team today!

Do You Have Dry Eye?

Want to learn more about Dry Eye? Watch this video to learn more about it.

How We Diagnose Dry Eye

Step 1:

We recommend regular, comprehensive eye exams to assess your eye health and correct your vision.

Take the following questionnaire. If your score is above 6, it’s time to talk about dry eye disease.

DEQ-5 Dry Eye Questionnaire

Step 2:

If we detect dry eyes during your routine visit, a dry eye workup that includes state of the art diagnostic equipment that gathers information on both the quality and quantity of your tears will be suggested and scheduled to determine the deficiencies in your tears.

Try our SPEED questionnaire to assess yourself for dry eye disease. Then, contact us today.

SPEED Questionnaire

Step 3:

Once we know the underlying cause of your dry eye symptoms and signs, we can offer you a tailored treatment plan that includes both at home and in-office tools techniques and strategies to alleviate the condition.

Our self-assessment will help you determine if dry eye disease is causing you discomfort.

OSDI Questionnaire

Step 4:

Follow-up and monitoring are essential to make sure that your eye health and comfort are improving. Repeating some of the initial diagnostic tests will allow us to monitor improvement. Keep in mind that dry eye disease is a chronic condition, so even after your eyes have improved, maintenance is essential.

Dry Eye Causes

There are two root causes of dry eyes: inadequate tear volume and poor tear quality. Our eyes require a healthy, balanced tear film to stay lubricated.

If we cannot produce enough tears, or the tears we do produce do not contain enough oil, water, or mucin, our eyes become dry and irritated.

Inadequate Tear Volume

Our tears are produced by several different glands, which are located in and around our eyelids. As we age, our eyes may not produce as many tears, which leads to dry eyes. Certain medical conditions and medications can also affect our ability to produce enough tears to keep our eyes lubricated.

Even if our eyelids can produce enough tears to meet our needs, environmental factors, such as a dry climate or wind, can cause our tears to evaporate too quickly.

Poor Tear Quality

Our tears are composed of three substances: an oil called meibum, water, and mucin.

Meibum keeps our tears from evaporating too quickly by forming a thin, protective coating over the tear’s surface.
Water helps keep our eyes hydrated and comfortable. If our tears evaporate too quickly, or our eyes cannot uniformly distribute our tears, it can cause dry eyes.
Mucin ensures that our tears form an even coating across the cornea.

Dry Eye Symptoms

Red eyes
Tired eyes
Blurry vision
Grittiness
Foreign body sensation
Sensitivity to light
A stringy discharge
Watery eyes
Increased glare, particularly while driving at night

While some patients feel a lot of discomfort, others feel virtually nothing, even with a severe case of ocular surface disease. This occurs when the corneal nerves become desensitized, interfering with the patient’s typical pain response.

Even without painful or uncomfortable symptoms, your optometrist can diagnose dry eye disease with a thorough dry eye work-up. The doctor will be able to spot physical signs that you may not feel.

Cutting Edge Diagnostic Technology

Each diagnostic test we run is one element of a bigger picture – much like pieces of a puzzle. When all of the pieces come together, your optometrist can quantify, qualify and diagnose your unique case of dry eye disease.

Armed with the proper diagnosis, the doctor can customize a care plan to manage the symptoms and signs of this chronic condition in the most effective way possible. We also rely on these diagnostic tests for follow up purposes to determine if your treatments are effective at improving your dry eyes.

TearLab Osmolarity

The Osmolarity System by TearLab is a diagnostic tool that gives us a quantitative measurement of how much salt is in your tears and detects a condition called hyperosmolarity, which is when there is too much salt. This data helps us determine your tear quality and provides insight into possible inflammatory causes.

InflammaDry

InflammaDry is a diagnostic test that is used to help us determine if you have dry eyes. This test detects elevated levels of MMP-9, which is an inflammatory marker that is typically high in patients with dry eye disease.

Idra Ocular Surface Analyzer

The surface of the eye plays a significant role our eye comfort. Our Idra Ocular Surface Analyzer can help us determine the quality of your tear film and the proportion of its components – meibum, water, and mucin.

This incredible device can also help our team understand the extent of your dry eyes by measuring your tear meniscus height, creating a 3D model of your meibomian (oil) glands, and non-invasively measuring your tear breakup time. We can also visualize and inspect the lashline, for any signs of inflammation or biofilm buildup, as well as analyze how effectively and efficiently you blink.