By now, you know better than to expect a scientific dissertation from us so we will simply tell it like it is from a user perspective. Now, obviously all these tears are fake and none of them are as good as the tears your eyes produce (or rather, the tears your eyes would be producing if they were working right) and you know that by experience because apparently whatever you’re using isn’t working or you wouldn’t be here. But certainly, not all drops are alike.

Our own experience is that most off-the-shelf eyedrops don’t do much for people with moderate to severe dry eye beyond provide a few minutes’ pain relief and that we might as well be dumping saline in our eyes as paying for them. But if that’s all you’ve got, you use it (only please see our warning here about overusing them), because we all need to relieve the pain and discomfort, and in many cases using anything is better than using nothing.

But for more lasting relief for patients with moderate to severe symptoms, there are only a few products that seem to help any noticeable numbers of the post-LASIK/PRK people we know. The most frequently praised over-the-counter product seems to be Theratears (difficult to procure outside the US however) which makes regular eyedrops and liquid gel drops as well as a nutritional supplement. The products with perhaps the most loyal following among severe dry eye patients are the Aqueous Pharma products (Dwelle, Dakrina, Nutratear/RedKote, APL-105/FreshKote); they are not as easy to get as others because they have to be procured with a prescription at a compounding pharmacy which has a special arrangement to produce them, however, by late spring 2005 they will be produced in larger quantities and sold retail over the internet (over-the-counter, not prescription). Finally, Systane seems to work reasonably well for some patients, though the success reports we have heard have been pretty limited.

(If your experience is different, by all means let us know - write to us about it in the "Post a Review" section of our community forums, D'Eyealogues.)

I have to say it’s very risky talking about which drops work, because we do not exist to promote products. But the whole point of this site is to get you information on what actually seems to be working for people like us and, whaddyaknow, the drops I just talked about seem to work. If that stops being true, we’ll rewrite this page. — Also, we fear some of you may think we’re suggesting that Theratears or the Aqueous Pharma products are miracle drugs, which they aren’t. Artificial tears of any kind have their limitations and should not be over-used. You need to look at the big picture, what’s causing your dry eye, and attack the problem on every front you can. Drops are just one treatment, and since it happens to be the easiest one, people tend to do it most.

A final note: There are some tears which are simply guaranteed not only not to work, but to cause problems if you use them like artificial tears: The drops you use to "get the red out" when you enjoyed yourself a little too much last night. This means Visine and any other drops containing vasoconstrictors. All these do is cosmetically improve your eye by forcing the blood vessels (which have innocently dilated to protect themselves) to constrict. This will not only do nothing whatever for your dryness, but if you use them regularly they can (among other things) make your dry eye worse.