We can diagnose dry eyes by measuring tear production and looking at the eye with special stains. As mentioned above, there are two main types of dry eye, but there can be many contributing factors that are important to identify.
At our San Marco office, we have the latest in technology and equipment to help aid in diagnosis and identifying other underlying contributing factors of your dry eye. We carefully examine your eyelids and the front surface of the eye with our equipment and will use different stains to assess the quality of your tears.
Your Dry Eye Evaluation
The testing and equipment that we may perform at your dry eye evaluation includes:
- SPEED questionnaire – allows us to subjectively assess your symptoms
- TearLab – assesses the osmolarity of you tears
- Inflammadry – tests for inflammation in your tears
- Keratograph – measures a variety of factors, including:
- Non Invasive Tear Break Up Time – tracks the evaporation of your tears across your cornea
- Tear Meniscus – measures the amount of tears accumulating on the front surface
- Meibography – gives a visual of your Meibomian glands to see how many are still present
- Bulbar redness – allows us to quantify the amount of redness in your conjunctiva
- Lipiview
- Allows us to visualize the oil layer of your tears
- Allows us to observe your natural blinking
- Slit Lamp Evaluation – we use special dyes (sodium fluorescein and lissamine green) to fully assess the cornea and conjunctiva
- Meibomian Gland Evaluator – we will express the glands of the eyelids to observe what comes out of your glands
Your doctor may order additional testing if they feel there are other underlying issues. They may order blood work to test for an autoimmune condition called Sjogrens. They may also recommend allergy testing, which is done in office at all of our locations.
Dry Eye Center of Excellence
Florida Eye Specialists is the area’s only Dry Eye Center of Excellence and utilizes the latest, cutting-edge technology to create the best individualized treatment for patients.
Our San Marco location includes a full-service Dry Eye Center, headed up by Dr. Kimberly Riordan.