about eight months ago i did one of my very first videos talking about the yellow spot
on your eye you can get called a pinguecula and i've gotten a lot of good comments and
questions in that video so i thought i'd take the top five most common questions
about pinguecula and answer them in today's video let's focus in
hey howdy everybody this is Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, doing videos all about the eyes
to help you with your eyes now let's get right into the top five questions that i've gotten
about pinguecula these questions will be in order of least to most common so the last
question is by far the most common question that i've gotten about pinguecula question number one
is a pinguecula affecting my ability to wear my contacts and yes it's possible it can actually
mess with your contact lenses if the pinguecula is close enough to the cornea sometimes that contact
will bump or rub up on the pinguecula and maybe push the contact lens around it may cause a
rotation it may cause more excessive movement when you blink and so that pinguecula can cause
irregularities with contact lens wear if your pinguecula is far enough away kind of like mine is
then sometimes it won't even touch the contact lens or maybe if it's really shallow and
smooth sometimes the contact can drape over the pinguecula and be fine but depending on the person
if the pinguecula is close enough and big enough it can push that contact lens around and make it
really annoying to wear contact lenses question number two is there something that can be done for
the yellow color of the pinguecula can you just get rid of the color so it's white unfortunately
there's not a way to get rid of the yellow color now that being said a lot of times when you have
a lot of vasculature or maybe the pinguecula is inflamed and beefy looking and irritated looking
you can calm down the inflammation whether it's with eye drops or steroid eye drops and
it will get rid of the inflammation and it does improve the color and that beefiness because it
doesn't have a red inflamed look but doesn't really necessarily get rid of the yellow color
of the pinguecula number three can the pinguecula be surgically removed the answer to this one
is yes you can actually have the pinguecula surgically removed now most of the time i've
seen the surgery reserved for people that have really really bad inflamed pinguecula where it's
elevated it's causing a lot of irritation maybe when the patient is blinking it's rubbing and
touching the pinguecula it's causing pain and a lot of issues and so you can actually get it
surgically removed to smooth out that tissue now normally i haven't really seen much with a mild or
a moderate pinguecula getting a surgery but it is possible you can get it surgically removed before
we get to the other questions make sure you hit that like button down below so this will help
the video get out get awareness to the people that might have these same types of questions
fourth question this question was really common almost tied with the top question that i've gotten
and that's if blue light or the screens can cause a pinguecula people nowadays are spending a lot of
time looking at computer screens or their phone screens they hear a lot about blue light and
artificial light and they're wondering hey is that light actually causing my pinguecula the answer
there is no likely not now a penguecula definitely can be egged on and caused by ultraviolet light
uv light that you can get from outside outside in the sun typically screens aren't
projecting ultraviolet light from the screens and so you're not getting that damage that you'd get
from ultraviolet light now the blue light is a more high energy light that you can get from the
screens but that blue light isn't causing enough damage to cause that pinguecula in fact you'll
get way way more blue light when you go outside into the sun even in a short amount of time being
outside in the sun will be way more than the blue light that you'll get from your computer screens
now we may have more research that will come out and show that maybe the computer screens
or that type of light may be causing damage on the surface of the eyes but right now it's likely not
doing anything as far as developing a pinguecula now i have done other videos talking about blue
light how it does affect your eyes so make sure you check out my playlist right there i go into
more detail about how blue light may affect your eyes likely more what is happening when you're
staring at your screens when you're staring at your phones you're blinking a lot less and your
eyes are drying out the surface of your eye is drying out and that's one of the biggest causes
of the development of a pinguecula is eye dryness and when you're doing a long period
of time where you're staring at screens if you're working on computer screens all day long
even from when you're a kid your eyes the surface of your eyes will be more dry and that
can actually lead to more of a development of a pinguecula now the fifth question the most common
question by far are there any eye drops that can cure or get rid of a pinguecula the answer is
no i'm sorry but no now let me be very specific on this one there aren't any eye drops that can
completely get rid of a pinguecula meaning if you have a yellow spot on your eye and you
take eye drops for a certain amount of time it won't get rid of that yellow spot it won't cure
a pinguecula now that being said eye drops are definitely one of the most recommended treatments
for a pinguecula to help prevent a pinguecula from getting worse like i mentioned in the pinguecula
video i do mention that the biggest pinguecula treatments are definitely treating your dry
eye issues and that includes artificial tears also protecting your eyes from uv light outside
with sunglasses hats making sure that you limit how much uv light is getting onto
the surface of your eyes those are the biggest treatments that you can do to treat a pinguecula
but biggest thing is to prevent the pinguecula from getting bigger not necessarily getting rid of
the pinguecula now one thing i do want to mention about eyedrops is sometimes when the pinguecula
is really inflamed there's a lot of redness involved it's almost irritating and sometimes can
be painful depending on how irritated it is your doctor can actually prescribe prescription steroid
eye drops or prescription anti-inflammatory eye drops to get rid of the inflammation to make the
redness a little bit better to calm it down and to make it a little bit more tolerable so just
remember that if your eyes or your pinguecula is really irritated inflamed there are prescription
eye drops that can help calm it down a little bit and make sure that you check out the description
below i'll put links to certain eye drops that i prefer that i recommend to my patients all
the time that are dealing with eye dryness and a pinguecula definitely recommend preservative
free eye drops if you have a preservative free eye drop it tends to do better at treating the
eye dryness there's a little bit less irritation especially if you're more sensitive to the
preservatives in those types of eye drops and it can help just reduce the irritation of that
pinguecula now make sure you do check out the main video i did about pinguecula there were many
many more questions that people asked me in that video and i tried to answer them the best i could
in the comments section there but if you have more questions about a pinguecula definitely
leave them below i try my best to answer all the questions that people ask me hey and thanks for
watching the whole video I'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, focusing on you and your eyes stay
focused and be sure to check out my other videos right there and i'll see you in the next video