The links between corneal nerves and the brain may be more difficult to study, but Galor says most treatment strategies based on the prevailing understanding of dry eye disease haven’t shown a sufficient connection between treating the signs and resolving the symptoms. Other efforts have recruited patients who may be suffering from vastly different conditions. “We need to rethink the biology of dry eye when we design our studies,” she says.
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If he can secure funding, Borsook hopes to conduct an MRI imaging study of LASIK patients that might show differences in the brains of those with chronic eye pain. “There’s certainly a neuroscience interest in it,” he says, “but the biggest thing is, can you help patients get to a point where doctors believe them?”
That point cannot come soon enough for patients who tell remarkably similar stories about being accused of lying, of having psychiatric issues, of wasting their doctors’ time.
For these patients, “there is nothing that is more damaging to their psyche than being dismissed and invalidated by eye doctors, and they’ve all been through it,”, Neil Brooks says. Doctor after doctor told him that because he had tears and an intact tear film, his severe pain couldn’t be as bad as he described. “And I had to come up with comebacks,” he says. “I found myself never making progress on why my eyes might hurt because I was spending all my time trying to convince a doctor that [they did].”
In the absence of help from the medical community, Facebook has become a vital hub for many patients to share tips, encouragement and information.QUOTE]