Blepharitis symptoms and treatments

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 8:17 pm Post in Eye Diseases

Both anterior blepharitis and posterior blepharitis are forms of eyelid inflammation, particularly at the lid margins. These two types of blepharitis bring symptoms such as eye irritation, burning, tearing crusty debris, dryness and red eyelid margins. There are still more severe consequences: eyelash loss, ectropion, dilated and visible capillaries and potential cornea erosion.

However, the two types affect different areas of eyelid and have different reasons. While the outside front of the eyelid is associated with anterior blepharitis, posterior blepharitis affects the inner eyelid. While anterior blepharitis is always caused by scalp dandruff and bacteria, posterior blepharitis results from skin disorders.

Blepharitis is likely to recur and tends to be chronic, so that its treatment requires more patience and skills. The most common treatments include compress applying, cleansing, eyelids massaging etc… Before cleansing your eyelids, you can use warm compress to loosen and warm up the eyes’ crusts. This process always takes five minutes every time and four times daily. You can just dampen a clean washcloth with warm water and put it on your closed eyes. After warming up your eyes with compress, you should cleanse eyelids with cool washcloth and cotton swab several times each day.

There are other treatments: antibiotic treatment for special blepharitis, eyelid massaging for gland dysfunction and flaxseed oil supplements for meibomian seborrheic blepharitis.

If dryness is aroused by blepharitis, eye drops, artificial tears, lubricating ointments, silicone punctual plugs, and steroids can offer effective help under your doctor’s instruction.

Blepharitis also affects your contact lenses selection. Under particular circumstances, you will be suggested to stop wearing contacts for a certain period. Even if you are allowed to wear contacts, you’d better to choose RGPs, because of they are more resistant to deposits.

Makeup can never be applied to blepharitis eyelids, while sometime anti-dandruff shampoo is needed for scalp and eyebrows.