Dry Eye

Dry eye disease occurs when your eyes don't produce enough tears or produce poor-quality tears that evaporate too quickly. Tears are essential for comfort, clear vision, and the health of the eye's surface. It's a chronic and often progressive condition.

Disease

Symptoms

You may feel a stinging, burning, or gritty sensation (like sand in your eyes). Other symptoms include redness, watery eyes (a reflex to irritation), stringy mucus, blurry vision that improves with blinking, and difficulty wearing contact lenses. Symptoms often worsen in windy, dry, or air-conditioned environments. Risk factors include age, being female, menopause, certain medications, autoimmune diseases, and prolonged screen use.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis is based on your symptoms and an eye exam. Your doctor may measure your tear volume, assess tear quality, and examine the surface of your eye with special dyes to look for signs of dryness and damage.

Treatments

For mild cases, over-the-counter artificial tear drops or gels provide relief. Lifestyle changes like using a humidifier and taking screen breaks can help. For moderate to severe cases, your doctor may recommend prescription anti-inflammatory eye drops, punctal plugs (tiny inserts that block tear drainage), procedures to unblock oil glands in the eyelids, or special contact lenses that protect the surface.

More to read

Disease

Cataract

A cataract is a clouding of the eye's natural, clear lens. Think of it as a clear window that slowly becomes frosted. This clouding scatters light, preventing a sharp image from reaching the retina. It is most commonly related to aging. However, some forms of congenital cataract are seen in children.

Disease

Refractive Error

Refractive error means that your eye does not focus light ideally onto the retina, resulting in a blurred image on the retina. This condition is not a disease, but a common problem with light focusing. Its main types include myopia (nearsightedness: nearby objects are clear while distant objects appear blurry), hyperopia (farsightedness: distance vision may be clearer than near vision), and astigmatism (vision is blurry at all distances due to an irregularly shaped cornea).

Disease

Night Blindness

Night blindness is a symptom, not a disease. It means your eyes have trouble adapting to low light. This is often due to a problem with the rod cells in your retina, which are responsible for night and peripheral vision.

Disease

Color Blindness

Most color blindness is not complete blindness to color, but a difficulty telling certain colors apart. It is usually an inherited condition (more common in males) present from birth. It happens when certain light-sensitive cone cells in your retina don't work properly. The most common type is trouble distinguishing reds from greens.

Disease

Retinopathy of Prematurity

ROP is a disease that affects premature infants. In the womb, the retinal blood vessels grow late in pregnancy. When a baby is born very early, this normal growth is interrupted. After birth, abnormal, fragile blood vessels may begin to grow in the retina. These vessels can leak and scar, potentially pulling the retina off (detachment).

Disease

Retinal Detachment

A retinal detachment is a medical emergency. It occurs when the retina peels away from the back wall of the eye, like wallpaper bubbling off a wall. When detached, the retina cannot function, leading to vision loss.