Nothing Conclusive

In the January 2024 edition of JAMA Ophthalmology, Dr. Paul McCann and colleagues wrote a review article about dry eye treatment.

They stated, “among reliable systemic reviews, no conclusive evidence was identified for any dry eye intervention.”

What?! We can’t prove that we can do anything about dry eye? So we might as well do nothing??

Well, that’s not quite it. While they found no “conclusive evidence,” there is still some evidence. This also mirrors clinical practice with all of the tear film/ocular surface issues that we place in the bucket of “dry eye.” There is no one treatment that works for everyone, and we often need multiple simultaneous treatments to really get any significant improvement.