Episcleritis advice

[riogrand187]

I am a 31 year old female I have been suffering from episcleritis for about 7 years I have it about 2 weeks out of every 5. I had blood tests 2 years ago nothing came up and I last went to the hospital 6 months ago. They did an eye exam said there was no damage and I just have to live with it. It is painful and I manage it with lots of ibuprofen witch make me feel tired and I look terrible which make me very depressed and not want to do anything. My question is do NSAIDS work any better and if so which brands I have read a few people saying they do. Any advice is welcome as this is ruining my life.

[Doreen Fazio, M.D.]

Episcleritis fortunately does not damage the eye or vision, but can be uncomfortable.  Topical treatment with drops is preferred to oral medication, but aspirin or ibuprofen can help with the pain.  There are "soft" steroids (which have a lower potential to cause cataracts and increase the eye pressure) and topical NSAIDS which can be used to manage a recurrence.  You should be under the care of an ophthalmologist, who will watch for any side effects of the treatment.

[SaraNF83]

I don't know if this will be helpful but I wish someone told me this when I was going through something similar... I had dental work done and apparently I had some sort of weird reaction to the materials used. Once I switched the fillings out in both top molars - my recurrent episcleritis went away... I'm not kidding, and my opthamologist was baffled and still is. However I unfortunately developed early cataracts from all of the steroid usage to help with the episcleritis attacks.