Ocular Allergies

With ocular allergies it's quite difficult sometimes to make a true diagnosis because a dry eye can mimic an allergy-affected eye. Generally, if the patient has other symptoms like runny nose, sneezing, and puffiness around the eyes, we can make the diagnosis of an allergy; but since it's so similar to a dry eye, a good look under the microscope, putting diagnostic dyes onto the surface of the eye, and a good thorough history from the patient can usually help to figure out what’s going on.

Most times, an over the counter allergy drop works fine. Many of these over the counter allergy drops used to be prescription items, but if you’re someone who is taking an oral allergy medication and an eye drop that’s over the counter, using that every day and still not getting relief, we do have prescription eye drops for allergies that we can use.