Fluorescein Eye Staining: Procedure Demonstration

00:01 So now we're going to go back to the procedure.

00:04 So we've already talked to the patient.

00:05 The patient is fully aware of why we're doing this procedure and what we're looking for.

00:10 I've already washed my hands I've already donned gloves.

00:13 And now we're ready to take out the fluorescein stain strip.

00:18 So you're going to open the package.

00:26 Okay. And as you can see it's got kind of this RG red look here.

00:32 And then you're going to open up your artificial tears.

00:36 And you just want to slightly wet.

00:39 You don't want to over excessively wet because you will get ripples , which you don't want ripples.

00:46 And then we're going to imagine this is cow eyeballs.

00:50 But this is a good way.

00:51 They're the closest replication that we could get to human eyes to be able to show you this. But you want to keep in mind this would be the upper lid and eyelashes, and down here would be the lower lid.

01:04 So we would be pulling the lower lid.

01:08 And we're going to just stain.

01:10 This is a little different because I can't ask the cow to blink its eye.

01:15 So I'm putting a little fluorescein stain everywhere.

01:23 Okay. And typically you would ask the patient to blink their eyes several times so that this is getting over all of the eye.

01:30 And then we're going to wait 1 to 2 minutes.

01:32 And then we're going to look at this with our ophthalmoscope using the cobalt blue light.

01:37 So we're going to start. So our patient has already had the fluorescein stain completed.

01:41 They've waited the 1 or 2 minutes for the stain to take effect.

01:44 Now we're going to start a systematic look at the eyes.

01:48 So we're going to start at the 12:00 position. And we're going to go around. And as you can see when I get over between the eight and 11:00 position, you see this large corneal abrasion.

01:59 This is going to be a little bit larger in size due to the size of the cow eyeballs.

02:04 So particularly on a human patient you're probably going to see this about 2 to 3 centimeter abrasion. And so we just want to look around again a second time isn't going to hurt to make sure that that's the only location that we see the abrasion at, and that's the only location.

02:22 So after you have looked, the next thing you're going to want to do is do your artificial tears or your sterile saline to wash out the eye, to keep them from getting a conjunctivitis from the stain.

02:38 So I'm going to come back now and do that.

02:40 You want to make sure when you do that you have the patient with a handkerchief or a tissue because this is going to go around their eye.

02:51 So you're just going to drop the drops in the eye so that you can see that it clears away the stain. And again remember you could use a eyewash as well.

03:06 And sometimes there is an eyewash lens that you can use and put over the eye.

03:10 So whatever your actual office has for you to be able to use, you can use that as well.

03:16 Remember to educate the patient though about the yellowish orange color that they may see see in their tears for a little bit post-procedure.