Dry eyes,Ophthalmology houston
SERUM TEARS Treatment
This August, our doctors at Slade & Baker Vision began offering an exciting revolutionary new treatment for dry eye at our clinic.
Everyone’s dry eyes are different, from the severity to the cause! We can now create a customized treatment for you, from your own blood plasma.
Christina, a phlebotomist, joined our practice 2.5 months ago to help us create this treatment as an inhouse offering to our patients. Christina is now our Dry Eye Specialist at Slade & Baker.
Who is Serum Tears for?
We encounter patients who have mild to moderate dry eye cases as well as patients with very severe dry eye cases. When a patient has dry eye or an epithelial defect, the serum is used like an artificial tear would be.
Serum Tears treats corneal defects, which are usually second to dryness, damage or previous inflammation.
Dry eye can be caused by our oil glands (MGD), the aqueous or watery part of our tears, as well as our own anatomy of the eyes. For example do you have proper closure of your eyes when you blink? Or when you sleep? This could be a reason contributing to your dry eye! You could have unnecessary exposure of your cornea if you don’t close fully. Other causes can include previous injury or irregular epithelium; scar from contact lenses, and even patients who have undergone chemotherapy treatments do sometimes suffer from dry eye symptoms later. Lastly, many patients have had shingles or similar viral outbreaks in the past, and this can lead to less sensitive nerves, resulting in slower healing whenever the eyes get dry.
Did you know women have 70% more likelihood to get dry eye due to hormonal changes?
What does the Serum Tears Treatment do?
We have proteins in our blood serum that help rebuild corneal defects more effectively than normal artificial tears.
Think of serum like a human band-aid on the eye – like a liquid coat of healing on the eye.
The optimal results of this treatment are to provide lubrication and help rebuild corneal defects over time. When patients have a smoother surface, both comfort and vision typically improve.
How does Serum Tears Treatment work?
As a patient, you would make an appointment at our office with one of our doctors and meet with our dry eye specialist who would create a customized treatment plan for you. Everyone’s dry eye is different because of the different causes, and the treatment plan must match the causes.
Our dry eye specialist would do a simple blood draw of about 30 mL of blood, use a laboratory centrifuge to discard the red and white blood cells and clotting factors and use the serum to customize a sterile eye drop for you.
We centrifuge the serum in-house and use sterile techniques for bottling the drops.
How do I go continue my Serum Tears Treatment at home?
You would take around 40 small, sterile bottles home with you from our office to place in your freezer.
These bottles can thaw in minutes and you would apply these drops in your eyes 6 to 8 times a day. Once you thaw and use a bottle, it can be stored in your refrigerator for 2 days but can’t be refrozen. After 2 days since thawing, that bottle and contents should be discarded.
The bottles last 3.5 months, and our dry eye specialist will follow up with each patient to check and see how they are doing.
*Please note that Serum Tears is not a new procedure. Data has supported this treatment for years and we are so proud to now offer it as a treatment for our patients. It is so convenient to be able to process this in-house for our patients with a dry eye specialist who can customize a dry eye plan for each individual patient!
Call us today at 713-626-5544 if you or a loved one suffers from dry eye symptoms, this dry eye treatment may be just the right thing for you!
