My son has developed chalazion in his eye ?!
Question:
My son has developed chalazion in his eye ?
the doc said its not too bad and i can manage w/o surgery. if there is any thing i should keep in mind please tell me!!!! thank you!
Answers:
You have some wonderful answers. Here is a 'way' that most ophthalmologists handle this problem.
The meibomian glands are those glands in the eyelids that produce an oil that on the surface of the tears, sort of slows down the evaporation.
In some people, the oily stuff gets thick, and it'll plug up the opening. You can see those little openings running all along the upper and lower lids. Not in the hair follicle part, behind that part more towards the eye itself.
Because the gland is plugged up doesn't mean that the guys up inside there stop working. They just keep on making lots of oil. But since there's no drain, a cyst forms. This cystic bump can get inflamed. It's not an infection, but an inflammation or sterile inflammation.
These bumps can form on the outer portion of the tarsus, which is the 'skeleton' of the lid...a fibrous thick layer, or on the inside towards the eye. Those are called external chalazions or internal chalazions.
The treatment, as indicated, is to use warm compresses. The reason is that the warm moist heat can 'melt' or thin the thickened oil, and with a little pressure, the stuff can be expressed out of the glandular opening. It looks sort of like pus when it's this thick...and as you push it out, comes out sort of like toothpaste from a tube. One can express a LOT of stuff from certain people's lids who have chronic problems like this. They'll have 3 or 6 or 7 of these bumps of chalazia on both lids and it's not 'fun'.
After the warm soaks and massage or pressure towards the lid margin (up on the bottom lid, down on the upper lid), one can put antibiotic ointments such as neosporin, or bacitracin.
There are eye ointments like this. Some people use them, some don't as it's a physical problem, not an infectious one.
The 'surgery', if one of these gets really big and unsightly and bothersome involves making the area numb, placing a special clamp, then incising the gland, removing the stuff, and making sure that the wall of the gland is open so it cannot close up again and reform the cyst again.
These are not cancers. Just tumors which means mass.
Most resolve all by themselves without much manipulation at all. It's not that often one has to drain these things. But on occasion one does. And it doesn't usually leave a big scar if done well.