Скачать или смотреть Allergy and Itchy Eyes by Expert Ahad Mahootchi MD

Dr. Mahootchi discusses allergic eye disease. He dives into the different drops, nasal sprays and alternate options.


I’m Dr. Mahootchi from The Eye Clinic of Florida. Although allergies are common, sometimes they’re misdiagnosed.

So let’s talk about allergy.

Allergy for the eye is itching. If it’s not itching it’s not allergy. Unfortunately, a lot of the pills and other things used for systemic allergies aren’t that great for the eyes. Usually eye drops are the best thing to use. There are several different types of eye drops. The best I think is olopatadine. And olopatadine is now over-the-counter. It used to be a prescription drop. But it works two different ways. It’s a very good anti-allergy drop, anti-itch drop. Put it in and you’ll stop itching almost immediately. The nice thing about it is it has a second mechanism of action. If you take it everyday, it keeps you from having the allergic reaction in the first place. So it’s a nice combination.

Allergies in Florida usually are worse from about Super Bowl to Mother’s Day. And there’s another smaller season about a month before and after Halloween. But those eye drops and there’s a few others that can be used, seem to do the trick for most people. The nice thing is they’re not steroids and don’t need eye pressure monitoring and things like that. For really severe cases, you might need to use a steroid eye drop.

There are low dose steroids that work great. Usually we use them during the worst of the worst of the season. We typically will need to check the eye pressure if you’re on them for more than 6 weeks. So we don’t like to keep people on them for very long. And usually with olopatadine you don’t have to keep people on steroids. Sometimes for an acute reaction the skin around the eye will crack. For people who are having a sudden allergic reaction, you need to relieve the itching with an antihistamine. But you also need to protect the cracked skin. Once it cracks, it swells and cracks some more. So usually something that’s Vaseline or ointment based works great within the first couple days but doesn’t have to be continued long term. There are other uses for olopatadine. It’s a wonderful nasal spray. It doesn’t have side effects of steroids and doesn’t raise the pressure in the eye. Even though steroids in the eye can raise the pressure, steroids taken other ways can do it too; including nose spray. So this kind of eliminates that side.

Sometimes people worry about getting allergy testing. And although that’s nice, there are some problems with it. It tends to be very expensive and it doesn’t seem to change what you will do. If you’re going to give olopatadine eye drops anyway, does it really matter what the allergy is to? Whether it’s to one kind of tree or another, are you really going to get rid of your dog?

Sure you might change pillow cases and things like that but it’s often easier to take this over-the-counter drop for $20 than to change $400 in sheets. Probably the best thing to do is to start the eye drop and not worry about the testing. Because it is very, very expensive to do. Of course not all eye redness is allergy and there can be allergy to medications. Brimonidine is one, which is a glaucoma drop. There’s also a version of the drop that's used to relieve redness. Although it’s rare, you can become allergic to that over time. And there are other causes of eye redness that can be serious. So, I recommend you see us or an ophthalmologist to carefully look at the eye before dilation so you can see the redness and all the patterns and tricks that we see when we’re looking through the slit lamp to know what the actual diagnosis is.

If you have more questions, please call us at

(813) 779-3338

Or check out our website

www.SeeBetterFlorida.com