Lacrifill Injection into Punctum for Dry Eyes

CHAPTER 1

Hello, my name is Alexander Martin. I'm the Medical Director for Boston Vision in their Lawrence location. Today we're gonna do a procedure called Lacrifill. It's a brand new medication. And what we do with this is we're plugging up the drain in the eye, in the eyelid, the punctum. And historically, we've been able to do that with pieces of plastic or collagen, but now we have this new matrix solution that we can actually inject instead. By injecting it into that drainage system of the eye, we're able to make a situation where tears stay on the surface of the eye longer.

CHAPTER 2

So this is Lacrifill. It's a brand new product to the market. And what we're able to do, instead of the traditional putting punctal plugs in someone's punctum, now we can actually inject a matrix-like substance that will take up the space of the canal there. And by doing that, by plugging that surface up, we're able to keep more tears on the surface of the eye for longer.

CHAPTER 3

So I'm gonna have you just look up to the ceiling. So it's not a dilating drop, this is just to numb your eyes. One, two, nice work. Here's a tissue for you.

CHAPTER 4

All right, so then we'll just do chin and forehead in there. I'll bring it up for you a little bit. How about that, is that okay there? Yeah. Okay. Good, so we are all set up here. I just have to make sure that I'm in focus of the punctum. I will take a look at it and make sure that it is open. This one is very large, so this is gonna go well.

CHAPTER 5

And all I'm gonna have you do is actually look out over to this side. Perfect. There we go, nice work. And you just keep looking over there. And now I'm in the punctum. Good. Go ahead and just close your eyes for a second. I'm gonna do that one more time. There we go. Now we're actually in. Perfect. We're gonna do the same for the other eye. And then I'll have you just look up over that way. Perfect. And this one actually, the punctum is very, very small. Probably not gonna actually be able to get in it. No, this one's actually... Why is that? Well, you just have two different sizes, and this is pretty common. That's also why actually you're feeling so much more on your left eye compared to the right eye. On my left.

CHAPTER 6

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CHAPTER 7

Since we've changed the amount of tears on the surface of someone's eye after doing this procedure, we expect that their dry eye symptoms are gonna improve. I have lots of patients that are telling me that they do feel a lot better with this procedure, even if they've tried punctal plugs in the past. I'll see the patient back in about a week, make sure that their tear breakup time is actually improved and make sure that they're more comfortable. There's no maintenance involved with this procedure. What's really nice is that the studies, at least the initial studies, are showing that this lasts for at least six months for the patient. So this isn't something they have to do regularly, and whenever they want it topped off, we can top it off. So because the drainage system in our eye isn't a perfect circle, when we try to put plugs in there, we're always guessing at the right-size plug to fit in. Well, the advantage of doing this gel procedure is that the gel's gonna actually take up the space perfectly for the patient. And that's one of the biggest advantages of this.