More on Dry Eyes, Beta Blockers and Glaucoma

Happy Holidays and Happy Weekends to us all, it is a beautiful day today and Christmas is here. It is my fervent hope that our Christmas wishes, dreams, and aspirations as well as hope for the future are realized by each and every one of us.

In our previous discussion, we looked at activities that we tend to engage in, a lot often which results in our eyes getting dry, these ones were prevalent and almost all of us fall victim at a point in time in our life, to what we have learned we would manage things better for the betterment of our eye.

Today I want to continue on the line of dryness of the eye and we would be looking at it from the perspective of glaucoma and ocular hypertensive patients who have to be treated with topical beta blockers to help reduce the pressure and save their optic nerve from damage as well as their sight.

I hope you enjoy the read, do well to let me know if you need any clarification on any point mentioned or perhaps you would want to talk to me personally about any particular problem you may be facing with your sight or ocular health, i am always available in the hive ghana as well as the stemsocial server on discord.

In the management of ocular hypertension as well as glaucoma, the first line of treatment has become the use of beta-blockers such as timolol to reduce the pressure to a target pressure. While there are other anti-ocular hypertensive or antiglaucoma medications from different classes that could be used for patients, beta blockers have proven to be quite effective as a first line of defense.

And so the others come in severe cases or as the condition progresses or when patients fail to respond to beta blockers. Beta-blockers simply work by reducing aqueous humor production in the eye, it does this through the sympathetic pathway of the ciliary epithelium within the eye, blocking the nerve endings and directly the production of aqueous.

Unfortunately over the years, it was realized that individuals who tend to use timolol over a longer period tend to come back to the hospital with dry eyes. A lot of research was done and it was concluded by many researchers that the beta blocker has a significant role to play in this because of which it became pertinent that ocular lubricants were added as a preventive measure against dry eye in the treatment of glaucoma or ocular hypertension.

Not directly related to our discussion on dry eyes though however it is worth mentioning that beta blockers also have the tendency to have adverse effects on individuals with respiratory conditions such as glaucoma which makes it contraindicated in asthmatic patients. And so what I am trying to put across today is that if you using beta blockers for anti-hypertensive or glaucoma management, you are most likely to experience dryness however you do not have to worry because your Optometrist has definitely considered this as part of your management.