preemie-l Tear ducts and who does better?
DDerleth@aol.com
Sat, 15 Jun 1996 09:18:09 -0400
To answer a couple of recent questions:
It's no tale: premie girls do better, in general, than premie boys. This
has been well documented in many large studies.
There is a tear duct (the nasolacrimal duct) that runs from the inside corner
of each eye down to the nose. (That is why crying causes a runny nose.) In
many babies the duct does not open for some time after birth. The symptoms
are a crusty "mattery" eye, (especially after sleeping, when the eyes are
closed for quite awhile), and, sometimes, an infection of the upper part of
the duct. This is a common issue in term babies, too.
These clogged ducts usually open on their own before the age of 8 months, so
they are left alone until then, unless there is an infection. There is a
very simple surgery that can open the duct after that if it doesn't open on
its own. A certain type of massage can sometimes pop the occluding membrane
in the duct. Some doctors recommend eye drops for this problem until the
duct is open, but it isn't clear if this really helps.
If the upper part of the duct gets infected, which shows up as an obvious red
lump under the inside corner of the eye, the surgery is done to unclog the
duct and both help clear the infection and prevent future infections.
Lack of tears is not a symptom of this problem. In fact, since some of the
tears can't get down to the inside of the nose through the duct, there tend
to be more tears visible from the eye, not less. It has no relationship to
ROP, which is a disease that is confined to the inside of the eyeball.
Doug