WHAT IS

Eyelid Hygiene & Wellness

Just like getting regular teeth cleaning, Dr. Le recommends routine visits with the eye doctor to thoroughly clean your lids and lashes to help keep bacterial & parasitic load down. This will help improve dry eye symptoms and overall discomfort. Poor hygiene can lead to an overpopulation of Demodex mites. These mites bury themselves deep in the lash follicles and carry with them bacteria. This typically leads to dry, itchy, watery, gritty eyes, as well as frequent eye infections (pink eye, blepharitis), styes (chalazion, hordeolum).

Eyelid hygiene is highly recommended for patients who:

• Use false lashes (strip lashes, preparing to get a fresh set of lash extensions, or recently had lash extensions removed)

• Makeup users

• Inability to maintain lid hygiene at home due to manual restrictions

• Those who have frequent eye infections and stye

• Prior to eye surgery (lasik, cataract)

• Allergy sufferers - itchy eyes

For routine cleaning and mild blepharitis, microexfoliation cleaning is done with a gentle and painless device similar to an ultrasonic toothbrush. Your eyes are closed during the treatment. It is fast, effective, and painless. It removes makeup, eyelash glue, debris, flakes, and bacteria. It also stimulates and rejuvenates the oil-producing meibomian glands in your eyelids to improve dry eye symptoms. Rinsada ocular irrigation is used for routine maintenance or if acute symptoms like irritation or itchiness occur. Rinsada is used to clear out the deep inner folds of the eyelids called the fornix using high pressured saline irrigation. This removes irritation causing biofilm at the entire ocular surface.

If you suffer from moderate-severe blepharitis, Dr. Le may recommend in addition to cleaning, an in-office deep cleaning system called ZEST (Zocular Eyelid System Treatment). Zest is a plant-based system that is fast and painless. It removes the bulk of dead skin cells, dander, Demodex mites and biofilm that causes infection, inflammation & dry eye to kickstart the path to improvement. ZEST has been shown to alleviate symptoms within minutes of completion. It helps with pain and inflammation. It is safe for all ages and skin types. ZEST is recommended every six months for those with moderate-severe blepharitis.

If you are preparing to have eye surgery (LASIK, PRK, SMILE, cataract, blepharoplasty surgeries), your ophthalmologist may recommend having eyelid cleaning done before surgery. Lid hygiene allows for more reliable pre-op testing so that your surgical outcome is best predicted. It also improves the cleanliness of the eye area pre-operatively to avoid infection and complications.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• Arrive to your appointment with clean eyelids, no eye makeup or false lashes

• The treatment is painless and fast. Your eyes will be closed during treatment.

• Very seldomly occurs, but some patients may experience mild redness or irritation that typically goes away in a few minutes- hour

• No downtime!