Abstract
Purpose:
The subjective symptoms of conjunctivochalasis (CCh) vary, as CCh causes precorneal tear film instability, increases the mechanical friction during blinking, and decreases tear flow at the lower tear meniscus. The purpose of this present study was to evaluate the differences in subjective symptoms between conjunctivochalasis and dry eye.
Methods:
This study involved 87 eyes of 87 dry eye patients [12 males and 75 females; mean age: 64.2±12.1 (mean±SD) years] and 70 eyes of 70 CCh patients (18 males and 52 females; mean age 69.0±8.5 years). Subjective symptoms including dry eye sensation, difficulty in opening the eye, foreign body sensation, pain, redness, tearing, discharge, itchiness, blurred vision, sensitivity to light, heavy eyelids, and eye fatigue were evaluated by use of the visual analogue scale (VAS) (0: no symptoms; 100 mm: maximum symptoms).
Results:
Subjective symptoms were stronger in the order of eye fatigue, dry eye sensation, and heavy eyelids in the dry eye patients, and in the order of eye fatigue, blurred vision, and dry eye sensation in the CCh patients. Between the dry eye and CCh patients, significant differences in subjective symptoms were found in dry eye sensation (dry eye: 55.1±31.7; CCh: 37.3±30.3, p=0.0005), pain (dry eye: 39.3±32.2; CCh: 27.8±29.7, p=0.0219) and tearing (dry eye: 18.2±30.1; CCh: 36.3±33.9, p=0.0001).
Conclusions:
The findings of this study show that CCh exhibits subjective symptoms similar to those of dry eye. The symptom of tearing may help to differentiate the diagnosis of dry eye from that of CCh, since tearing is stronger in CCh due to the decreased tear flow at the lower tear meniscus due to the redundancy of the conjunctiva.
Keywords: 486 cornea: tears/tear film/dry eye