What To Expect From Your Steroid Eye Drop Treatment For Uveitis
Being diagnosed with uveitis can be a frightening experience, but the good news is, there are a variety of treatment methods for controlling this disease. If you've been diagnosed with uveitis and your eye doctor wants to use steroid eye drops to treat your condition, rest assured that it's a common method for treating this disorder and will help you. Here's what you need to know about those eye drops.
Why It's Used
Steroid eye drops are utilized because of their ability to help control the immune system. With uveitis, the immune system in your body that normally protects you from bacteria and viruses acts out and begins to attack healthy cells, like those in the eyes. This can cause tissue damage and even blindness if left untreated.
Steroids are known to tamp down the immune system's ability to function properly. When the immune system is out of control like this, it can limit the damage that it's able to do to your healthy cells significantly.
Immediate Relief
The other good thing about eye drops is that you won't have to take oral steroids. There are two significant benefits to this: immediate relief, and fewer side effects.
Since the drops are applied directly to the surface of the eye, they're absorbed into those tissue directly. They don't have to pass through your bloodstream first, which means the rest of your body—and its immune system—will have little to no impact from the steroids. Secondly, the drops can start working as soon as they're absorbed, so you should immediately feel some relief from the irritation you've been experiencing.
Regular Dosing Is Important
Finally, the one thing you must remember to do with steroid eye drops is to remain regular about taking them. How often you take them will depend upon your doctor's directions, so pay careful attention to what they have to say. If they tell you to take your drops every 12 hours, for example, make sure that you're actually following that down to the hour, rather than trying to just take the drops twice a day. This will ensure that the medication is constantly suppressing your immune system in your eyes. With gaps in your doses, your eyes may experience more tissue damage.
Steroid drops are typically a painless and safe way to control uveitis symptoms. Follow your doctor's directions regarding your new medication and remember to ask any questions that you might have. Find out more here.
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