Changes of tear meniscus in dry eyes patients after using topical anesthetics

Abstract

AIM:To investigate the change of tear meniscus after using topical anesthetics on tear meniscus in dry eyes patients. METHODS:Fifty cases with dry eyes were chosen in this clinical trial. They were randomly divided into two groups, one group as the experimental group, using topical instillation; another group as the control group, with 9g/L saline instillation. After 15min, anterior segment optical coherence tomography(AS-OCT)was used to measure tear meniscus height(TMH), tear meniscus depth(TMD)and tear meniscus area(TMA)before and after treated with topical anesthetics eye drops, and the changes were compared. RESULTS:After treated with topical anesthetics eye drops, the value of TMH was 0.173±0.040mm; TMD was 0.166±0.019mm; TMA was 0.049±0.013mm2.They were significant different from the values before treated with topical anesthetics(tTMH=2.78, PtTMD=2.31, PtTMA=2.69, PtTMH =5.87, PtTMD=2.04, PtTMA=4.63, PCONCLUSION:Topical anesthetics can effectively relieve the tear meniscus in patients with dry eyes,which need to arouse awareness in clinical work.

Keywords

• topical anesthetics
• tear meniscus
• dry-eye
• anterior segment optical coherence tomography