What are the symptoms of having a plugged tear drain?
Many times the symptoms revolve around an infected tear sac and duct. The most common symptoms of this are excessive watering, mucous discharge, eye irritation, and a painful swelling in the inner corner of your eyelid. If the symptoms go untreated, infection can develop around the entire area of your eye. What is the treatment? We may recommend any number of treatments based on the analysis of your symptoms and your diagnostic tests. In some instances, it may be as simple as applying warm compresses with topical and oral antibiotics, but often surgery is the most effective treatment. If the obstruction is partial in nature, or involves a poor pump mechanism, sometimes endoscopic nasal surgery with placement of Crawford tubes can be done. This is a surgery that is done in the hospital but has a very minimal recovery time. This is reserved only for smaller obstructions and patients with lax eyelids with a poor pump. Sometimes an eyelid tightening procedure is needed in conjunction with
