Abstract
Purpose :
A very commonly observed problem is the difficulty of self instillation of eye drops in their own eyes by the patients, when they are alone. Quite often this requires multiple attempts resulting in the wastage of several drops outside the eye, which could be a costly preposition in some highly priced eye drops and also leads to poor compliance
Methods :
We have designed a small pocket sized device which is a simple, mirror based attachment which can be attached to any eye drops’ bottle which helps in accurate self instillation of the drops in the eye. We tried the prototype of this device in ten volunteer subjects, whereby they were asked to use lubricating eye drops (5 ml bottle) in one eye without the device (Group A) and in the other eye with the device (Group B) over a period of one month. The similar exercise was then repeated in 10 patients without the device in one eye (Group C) and with the device (Group D) and they were asked to return the used bottle after one month or when the drops in one of the bottle finished. The quantity of the residual eye drops in the returned bottles was measured with a syringe
Results :
At the completion of the study, there were a total of 232 applications of eye drops in both the group A and B. To achieve these 232 applications, there were 330 attempts without the applicator device and only 266 attempts of instillation with the device were needed. In group A, self instillation of eye drops, in first attempt, could be achieved only 154/232 times, in group B the same goal was achieved 198/232 times. In group A, two attempts had to be made 58/232 times, in group B, two attempts were needed only 34/232 times. In group A, 20 times, three attempts had to be made while none in group B. The cumulative quantity of residual eye drops in 10 bottles (5 ml each) in Group C was 11 ml (range 0-2.5 ml) while this was 22.8 ml in Group D (range 0.5 ml to 3.5 ml).
Conclusions :
The use of our eye drops applicator made it very simple for all the subjects to self-instill the eye drops in their eyes and also saved on the number of attempts needed to instill the eye drops. The use of our eye drops applicator device reduced the wastage of eye drops from 42.2% to 14.6% in Group A Vs Group B and saving of about 23.6% in Group D Vs Group C. This device came across as very useful in helping the patients in saving the time, effort and money spent in the process of self instilling the eye drops.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.