Open letter challenges Australian dry-eye-care capabilities

Their view is that Australian dry-eye care lags North American and European standards of care and capabilities significantly.The open letter is addressed to ophthalmologists, optometrists, and oculoplastic surgeons and starts out ‘Dear Eye Care Professionals’. With a hint of desperation, the group get quickly to the point and talk about ‘a fact that is slowly and agonisingly ruining our lives’, an otive style that is not uncommon in sufferers of entrenched dry eye.The deficiencies in Australia’s capability are blamed for ‘undue pain, suffering, and debilitation for men and women all over the country? and the group accuse eye-care professionals of ‘failing dry eye patients every single day by not adopting or pursuing the best-practice treatments currently erging or established in the global medical community’.One of the possible explanations for that situation universally is the multi-factorial nature of the condition and the possibility that it bridges multiple sub-specialties. Adding to that situation is the fact that dry eye is not well understood, is the subject of intensive ongoing research all over the world including Australia, and currently, there is no unanimous agreent about the ideal treatments for all the categories under the cover-all name ‘dry eye’. Increasingly, there is acceptance of ‘dry eye’ as being a complex ocular surface disease or even a complex of ocular surface issues.