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(t_TMH=2.78, P<0.01; t_TMD=2.31, P<0.01; t_TMA=2.69, P<0.01). After treated with topical anesthetics eye drops and saline instillation, the value of TMH,TMD,TMA were different between two groups(t_TMH =5.87, P<0.01; t_TMD=2.04, P<0.05; t_TMA=4.63, P<0.01).

CONCLUSION:Topical anesthetics can effectively relieve the tear meniscus in patients with dry eyes,which need to arouse awareness in clinical work.

Key words:topical anesthetics; tear meniscus; dry-eye; anterior segment optical coherence tomography