A Stye ( A Simple Guide to Stye) is an infected gland at the edge of the eyelid.
A stye develops when a gland supplying wax to eyelash at the edge of the eyelid becomes infected.
A stye can grow on the inside or outside of the lid.
Styes are not harmful to vision, and they can occur at any age.
A stye starts with pain, redness, tenderness and swelling in the area of the eye gland of the eyelid.
Then a small pimple appears.
Sometimes just the immediate area is swollen;
other times the entire eyelid swells.
There may be frequent watering in the affected eye, a feeling like something is in the eye or increased light sensitivity.
Staphylococcal bacteria is often found in the nose, and it's easily transferred to the eye by rubbing first your nose, then your eye.
Treatment for Stye
Most styes heal within a few days on their own.
You can apply hot compresses for 10 to 15 minutes, three or four times a day over the course of several days.
This will relieve the pain and bring the stye to a head, much like a pimple.
The stye ruptures and drains, then heals.
If you have frequent styes, your eye doctor may prescribe an antibiotic ointment to kill the bacteria causing the stye.
Styes formed inside the eyelid either disappear completely or (rarely) rupture on their own, and they can become more serious.
These styes may need to be opened and drained by your family doctor.
In my family practice I must have done at least a hundred incision and drainage of the stye.
Many are repeated operations. Once beaten not twice shy.
Many of the stye are due to dirty hands or dirty contact lenses which cause infection of the wax gland of eyelashes.
Most of the patients are female.
Because of the pain and the ugly appearance of their eyelid, the patient would rather have it removed than to wait until it burst.
Even though I jokingly that the patient will be an one eyed jack for 1 day wearing an eye pad to absorb the pus and blood, the patient will still ask for the operation.
After cleaning the eye with antibiotic drops, local anesthetic is infiltrated around the stye usually from inside the eyelid( less chance of scar formation) and the abscess forming the stye is incised and drained of the pus and dirty blood.
Once the pus is removed the eyelid is cleansed again with antibiotic eye drops and antibiotic ointment is applied into the wound.
An eye pad is applied to the eye and plastered on.
The next day the eye pad is removed with all the pus and blood and surprisingly the swelling has gone down.
The patient is then given antibiotic eye drops to clean the eye and eye ointment to apply to the eye lid every night.
There will be no wearing of contact lenses for at least 1 week.
Chalazion:
is another type of eyelid swelling which is further in the eyelid than a stye which is at the eyelash area.
Often mistaken for a stye, a chalazion is an enlarged, blocked oil gland in the inner lining of the eyelid.
A chalazion mimics a stye for the first few days, then turns into a painless hard, round bump later on.
Most chalazion develops further from the eyelid edge than stye.
Although the same treatment speeds the healing of a chalazion, the bump may linger for one to several months.
If the chalazion remains after several months, your eye doctor may drain it to facilitate healing.
The same operation is done for the chalazion except the incision is done further into the eyelid.
For the upper eyelid the eyelid may have to be inverted for the operation to be done.
No comments:
Post a Comment