Trends in Dry Eye Disease Management Worldwide

Dry eye disease (DED) is a condition frequently encountered in ophthalmology practice worldwide. The purpose of this literature review is to highlight the worldwide trends in DED diagnosis and therapy amongst practitioners and determine if a more uniform approach to manage this multifactorial condition has developed over the past two decades. A manual literature search utilizing PubMed was conducted to obtain papers with survey results relating to ophthalmology and optometry diagnosis and treatment of dry eye from January 2000 to January 2020. This did not include data from clinical trials as we were only interested in community clinical practice trends. The terms “dry eye” and “survey” were searched in combination with one or more of the following words or phrases: prevalence, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, etiology, risk factors, therapy, and quality of life. Papers were selected based on their direct applicability to the subject and were only included if they contained relevant survey data from community practitioners. The available literature suggests common trends worldwide in the diagnosis and treatment of DED. These trends have not modified substantially over the past two decades. Practitioner education on the benefits of measuring tear film homeostasis could increase its use as a diagnostic tool to complement current tools. Of the results found, 75% of the papers were published after 2006 and only one paper after 2017. More recent survey results are required to determine if research into DED pathophysiology is altering the current trend in DED management.