The treatment of glaucoma is a lifetime commitment to instill your medications as advised, to safeguard your precious vision.

The most crucial part of glaucoma treatment is understanding the correct way to use your eyedrops. Let me explain step by step.

For a glaucoma patient, instilling eyedrops daily is a part of their routine. Knowing the correct method of instilling eyedrops would help patients minimize wastage and maximize the effect of the medications.

Let’s discuss step by step

Step 1: Check the eye drop bottle

Check the name on the eye drop, just to ensure you are instilling the right medicine. You need to be particularly careful if you have been prescribed more than one type of eyedrops.

Look for the expiry date, and ensure that the medication is not expired. Eye drops usually contain preservatives that protect the solution from contamination for up to a month after the bottle is opened. Make sure that you utilize the medication within a month of opening the seal. At the end of the month you must discard any remaining solution to avoid infection to your eyes.

If you are opening a sealed bottle, avoid pricking it with unclean sharp objects. If you look inside the cap of the eye drop bottle, you’ll find a sharp spike. Just remove the sealing band and screw the cap tightly. The spike will pierce the nozzle tip and create a sterile opening in your eye drop bottle.

Step 2: Stick to your medication schedules

Glaucoma medications need to be instilled at a specific time each day. For instance, a particular eyedrop might be prescribed for use twice a day, make sure you instill it at a fixed time, like 8 am – 8pm. Make sure to stick to these timings daily.

If you have been prescribed more than one eyedrop, ensure a reasonable time gap between two drops. One hour gap is usually recommended.

Step 3: Wash your hands

Before you instill your eye medications, make sure to wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and dry them with a clean towel before you touch your eyes. Alternatively you could use an alcohol handrub to sanitize your hands. Either way, ensure that your hands are clean and germ free before putting your eye drops.

Step 4: Be seated

Sit comfortably on a chair or a sofa. Rest your back. The more comfortable you are while instilling your eyedrops, less are the chances of spillage and therefore less wastage.

Step 5: Instill the eye drop

Gently tilt your head backwards and hold the nozzle of the eye drop bottle directly over your eye. With your free hand, gently pull your lower eyelid downward. A small pocket will form between your lower eyelid and your eyeball. Squeeze the eye drop bottle and allow one drop to fall into your eye.

While putting the eye drop, make sure you don’t touch the tip of the eye drop bottle nozzle with your hands or to your eye as that will lead to contamination of your medication.

Remember, do not instill more than one drop. The space inside the eye allows for only one drop. If you put more than one drop, the second drop will simply flow out of the eye leading to wastage of medication.

Step 6: Close your eyes

After you instill the eye drop, gently close your eyes. This prevents evaporation of the medication from the surface of your eyes and allows it more time to get absorbed.

Remember not to squeeze your eyes, as that will push the eye medication into your nose or out of your eyes. Just close your eyes gently and relax for a minute.

Step 7: Press gently on the root of your nose

After you instill the eye drop, gently close your eyes and press on the root of your nose, right next to the inner corner of your eye. Doing this will delay the drainage of the eyedrops into your nose, thus allowing more time for absorption.

These steps can be used for instilling all types of eye drops.

I hope I’ve been able to teach you something useful through this post. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or email me at neha.pednekar1489@gmail.com

I’ll see you tomorrow with another interesting post about glaucoma. Till then take good care of your eyes and stay healthy!