How does a doctor diagnose dry eye, and what kind of tests might I expect?

Aug. 24, 2009— -- Question: How does a doctor diagnose dry eye, and what kind of tests might I expect?

Answer: Doctors who treat a lot of patients with dry eye, if you ask them can they do one test and give a diagnosis, they'll say no. They need to do often three or four or more tests to really understand what's going on. And so they're looking both at the quantity and quality of the tears.

Certainly the history is a very important test. And there are actually surveys where you fill out questionnaires and you get scores that are standardized to see if you fall in that category. And then you examine the eye under the microscope. Do the tears separate very quick? Tear breakup time -- under five seconds is a concern. You look at the tear meniscus, how high are the tears sitting at the lower lid. Is it very low volume of tears in the eye.

When you put dye in the eye you can look at the color of the tears and if they're any little breaks in the surface, the dye will stain -- S-T-A-I-N -- stain that area and you can quantify how much staining there is of the cornea. All those things together can give you a picture. And of course you're looking at the lids, the lashes, underneath the lids. The whole ocular surface contributes to dry eye syndrome.