lotemax eye drops

Will Steroid Eye Drops Help?

Been suffering from rebound hyperemia from long term use of vasoconstricters for about 2 years now. I have an appointment with an eye doctor in about two weeks. Should I ask him about Lotemax and/or Alrex? Will either of these drops help me recover from this? My eyes are very red and dry every day, will these drops have any effect on helping to reverse the rebound redness? Is there any cure for rebound hypermia?

Lotemax and Alrex are drugs that treat allergies and inflammation. Rebound hyperemia is not an allergy nor inflammation. All arteries have muscle tissue in the walls that control constriction and dilation of the arteries as the body needs. By constantly stimulating these arterial wall muscles over two years you have basically just fatigued them to the point where they no longer can constrict at all. So, they just totally relax and dilate, hence the constant redness that no longer responds to instillation of vasoconstrictors.

Since rebound hyperemia is not inflammatory in nature, these drugs you mentioned won’t help. The only thing that will help is totally stopping the use of vasoconstrictors and allowing the muscles to gradually begin to work again. This can take some time but it will happen. As the rebound hyperemia resolves, you need to start using medications that treat the CAUSE of the initial redness rather than masking the problem by constricting the vessels.

There are a couple of good anti allergy drugs available. One (probably the best) is called Patanol and is available by prescription only. Another pretty good one is Zaditor. It is available over the counter. Both of the drugs should be used on an on going basis throughout your normal allegy seasons.

If your original redness was not due to allergies but was due to dryness, then you should consider dry eye treatments that don’t “get the red out”.

One other possibility is that your eyes just normally have more prominent blood vessels and that’s just the way you are. If that is the case then you need to just accept the eyes that you have.