What if a key challenge in managing Demodex blepharitis wasn’t just diagnosis.
Despite careful instruction, consistent patient adherence to daily lid hygiene protocols, such as tea tree oil wipes, can be difficult to maintain.1
As a result, patients may return with persistent symptoms like itchiness and fluctuating vision, which can be particularly concerning for those awaiting ocular surgery.2,3
Recognizing compliance as a barrier to management highlights a clear, unmet need for targeted efficacious and tolerable therapies that can help simplify patient care.
Transcript
0:06 – My name is Eric Mertens, I’m a vision correction surgeon and I’m based in Antwerp, Belgium.
0:12 – When I diagnose Demodex blepharitis and I explain to my patient what the root cause is, then we go into how to treat it, of course, because a lot of those Demodex blepharitis symptoms are like itchiness or inflammation of the eyelids, fluctuating vision.
0:29 – So patients are bothered by it specifically when they come for surgery.
0:34 – We want to treat them before we go into surgery.
0:37 – My name is Filomena Ribeiro, I’m from Portugal, Lisbon.
0:41 – I’m head of the Department of the Ophthalmology of Hospital de Luz in Lisbon.
0:46 – I also teach in the University of Lisbon and the Catholic University, and I’m the current president of ESCRS.
0:56 – Right now, the solutions that we have, they don’t provide a total relief of the patient.
1:04 – So these are patients that come back to your clinical practice several times complaining about always the same symptoms and you don’t have the efficiency to treat the disease.
1:20 – My name is Mayank Nanavaty, and I work as a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Brighton which is in the United Kingdom.
1:26 – In the UK we have got some lid wipes which are for Demodex blepharitis, especially containing tea tree oil to clean the lashes.
1:37 – But there are also lid wipes which don’t contain tea tree oil and just a simple cleansing agent, which is also equally good in my opinion depending on the intensity of the collarettes in the Demodex blepharitis.
1:49 – The main concern with the lid hygiene protocol is the consistency and the compliance of the patients.
1:56 – And it is not uncommon to actually advise a patient all these things in detail and the patient is not following that.
2:04 – And so when you see the patient for the follow up, they still have the same symptoms.
2:07 – So I think we do need something which actually is specific for Demodex blepharitis. Tea tree oil is supposed to work well.
2:16 – But compliance as I mentioned is an issue.
2:19 – Therefore, there is a bit of a paucity of the methods or devices or drugs for management of Demodex blepharitis at this point of time.
2:30 – It does affect the overall outcomes of the patient, especially if they’ve got coexisting pathologies.
2:37 – And for example, if they’re going to go for surgical procedures, it may be very important to deal with this condition because the toxins can lead to inflammation in the eye.
2:48 – So there’s actually an unmet need to treat it.
2:51 – And actually we’re looking for a treatment which is easy to perform and gets rid of those Demodex blepharitis problems in an easy way.
3:02 – I hope there will be a solution for us soon.
