‘They’ said: Your patient listens to anyone and everyone

The best dry eye disease care occurs after a systematic evaluation of each individual’s particular set of symptoms, exam signs and point-of-care testing results. Success is achieved most often when a patient receives a care plan that inserts these individual factors into an established treatment protocol based on a combination of known best practices and the experience of the eye specialist who is leading the DED care team. Once instituted, the care plan is then re-evaluated after a reasonable trial period to determine if it is effective. At that point, perhaps some tweaking to the formula might improve the outcome for the patient. On first blush, those of you reading this statement who do what I do — take care of DED patients — are probably wondering why I even bothered to write it down because it is so painfully obvious.Well, it may be obvious to us, but “They” have yet to have their say, and “They” are all too often who your patients actually listen to.