What is the best treatment for pterygium?
How Is It Treated?
- Over-the-counter eye ointments or wetting drops.
- Eyedrops that clear up redness and irritation.
- Prescription steroid eyedrops to ease redness, itching, swelling, and pain.
What causes pterygium in the eye?
Pinguecula and pterygium are both caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and made worse by chronic dryness or irritation.
Does surfer’s eye go away?
Does pterygium go away on its own? It won’t go away on its own. A small pterygium may never cause problems for the eye as long as it stops growing. In most cases, the only way to completely remove a pterygium is with surgery.
How do you get rid of pterygia?
First, make an incision at the limbus where the pterygium begins to encroach over the cornea. Cut it free and peel it from the corneal surface using blunt dissection. Once the pterygium’s been removed, we often polish the cornea with a diamond burr.
Can pterygium heal itself?
Often, a pterygium will gradually start to clear up by itself, without any treatment. If so, it may leave a tiny scar on the surface of your eye that’s generally not very noticeable. If it bothers your vision, you can have it removed by an ophthalmologist.
How do you stop a pterygium from growing?
Your pterygium may be less likely to return if you have other treatments as well as surgery. These treatments, such as MMC (mitomycin C), stop cell growth in the area. And they may help prevent future growth there. A treatment called beta irradiation may also help prevent regrowth.
Can you go blind from pterygium?
A pterygium can lead to severe scarring on your cornea, but this is rare. Scarring on the cornea needs to be treated because it can cause vision loss. For minor cases, treatment usually involves eye drops or ointment to treat inflammation.
Are you awake during pterygium surgery?
A light intravenous sedation may also be given. Patients are awake during surgery. Patients do not hear or feel anything and are comfortable during surgery. Pterygium surgery is commonly done on an outpatient basis.
Can eye drops remove pterygium?
Treating a pterygium can be done without surgical removal. Smaller growths are usually treated with artificial tears to lubricate the eyes or mild steroid eye drops that counteract redness and swelling.
How do I stop surfers eyes?
The best treatment for surfer’s eye is prevention with sunglasses that block 100 percent of UVA and UVB rays. A wide-brimmed hat can also help. UV light reflecting off water or snow is particularly dangerous. Also remember that clouds do not filter out UV rays.
Can dry eyes cause pterygium?
What causes a pterygium? A pterygium is basically a callus that develops from exposure to sunlight, wind, and dust. Pterygia are more common in individuals with dry eye and can also increase the severity of the dryness. The exact cause of the growth is unknown.
Can pterygium turn cancerous?
And while pterygia themselves are not cancerous, new findings published by Australian researchers suggest that people who have a pterygium are nearly 25% more likely to develop malignant melanoma – a fatal form of skin cancer.