Q. My right eye is red, painful and sensitive to light with irritation. Please help.

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

A couple of things come to mind when an eye presents like you described red, painful, photophobic. The first one is an eye inflammation, officially called an anterior uveitis.

This is usually an isolated incident. It is considered idiopathic, which is just a fancy way of saying we do not know what causes it. If there is a history of this happening before sometimes lab work is ordered to rule out various diseases. Those might include things like Crohn's disease or Sarcoidosis or Spondyloarthritis.

For an anterior uveitis there is nothing over the counter (OTC) to treat it. A visit to an eye doctor to confirm this tentative diagnosis is in order.

If you are a contact lens wearer this could be a corneal ulcer, those present the same way as an anterior uveitis.

Anterior uveitis.

Again, there is nothing over the counter for this. If you indeed have an anterior uveitis it would need to be treated with prescription steroid drops. And we need to be careful with steroid drops, if you have an eye infection the steroid will make the eye infection much worse. And steroid drops have other side effects that need to be monitored, they can cause cataracts and they can cause an increase in the eye pressure (putting the patient at risk for glaucoma).

Nothing can be done to prevent this.

This does not appear to be self-limiting. I am happy to give you all this information but follow up with a doctor is definitely the next step.

Hi,

Welcome back to icliniq.com.

Yes, the lockdown does complicate things. If it is anterior uveitis like I suspect, then it should resolve on its own. It just might be painful during that time. You can take over the counter pain medicine like Alleve for that.

If your vision is not affected, then it might be fine to wait. If your vision is getting worse, you would want to make every effort to see a physician. No OTC drops for this. But, again, for the pain, you can use OTCs.

Same symptoms doesn’t mean you have the same problem. Consult a doctor now!

Dr. Rodney John Smith

Experience: 29 + Yrs

Ophthalmology (Eye Care)

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