How to Treat a Scratched Cornea
- Posted on: Sep 15 2018
Depending on what you like to do for hobbies or the industry that you work in, you may wear protective eyewear on a regular basis. Although protective eyewear can do a lot to, well, keep your eyes protected, accidents can still happen and you may get a scratched cornea. Let’s take a closer look at some of the basics of a scratched cornea.
What Does It Feel Like?
Before you can start to treat a scratched cornea, you have to identify it as that first. Common signs of a scratched cornea include redness, excessive tearing, and the feeling like something is stuck in your eye. If you still aren’t sure if you have a scratched cornea, then Dr. T. Jeff Russell can take a closer look at your eyes to see.
How Can You Treat It?
- Rinse It: First things first, you are going to want to rinse your eye to get anything that may be trapped inside of it, out. Using either a clean cup or an eye cup, place a saline solution or warm water in it. Then, place your eye over the cup so that it’s resting in the water and blink several times. Blinking will help the water come into your eye and hopefully get the dirt out of it.
- Don’t Wear Contact Lenses: Until your eye is fully healed, make sure that you avoid wearing your contact lenses because they can just make everything worse.
- Come Into Our Office: A small corneal scratch usually goes away after just a couple of days, but a larger scratch may need some antibiotic drops or even a steroid shot in some instances. After we have examined your eye fully, we will better be able to determine what treatment option will be best for you.
Accidents do happen; even if you are really careful. If you think that you have a scratched cornea, contact our Dallas office today and give us a call at (214) 522-2661.
Posted in: Corneal and External Eye Disease
