Are dry eye spas worth adopting?

As I embark on my 3-year anniversary of the Premium Channel column, the evolution of dry eye therapy has drastically changed since I first wrote about ocular surface disease 36 columns ago.Ocular surface disease has taken over the term dry eye syndrome in our practices because it encompasses more than just dry eye and the various contributors to a poor tear film, and as premium surgeons, we know this can affect preoperative diagnostic accuracy and postoperative visual outcomes. As dry eye centers of excellence — a term we use to call ourselves — we provide the various diagnostic tests and evaluations to come up with a fairly clear diagnosis and treatment plan for our patient. However, the adoption of therapies such as intense pulsed light and LipiFlow (TearScience) has not been easily accepted by the general dry eye patient due to cost and no additional value after the procedure is completed. This a la carte pricing approach for treatment fails nearly every time a patient has a complaint in the early postoperative period, blaming the “LipiFlow didn’t work,” which puts us premium surgeons in a precarious situation. Many practices have taken the turn and evolved into comprehensive dry eye spas, which brings a value-added approach to the patient based on all the new diagnostics and therapeutic approaches available to us as premium surgeons.