Dr. King:
So here’s the $400 in sti
Speaker:
Excise it. That’s usually my thinking. Is it a billing thing?
Dr. Cha:
Should we pop it out?
Dr. King:
Should we pop it out?
Dr. Cha:
Pop it out, pop it out, or pop a pill?
Speaker:
Oh god, that’s
Dr. King:
You pill pop, pit pull popper.
Dr. Cha:
Nice.
Dr. King:
What causes the popper
Dr. Cha:
That’s a good question.
Speaker:
Farts.
Dr. Cha:
No myth buster.
Speaker:
Farts Cause everything, right?
Speaker:
They just cause infection.
Dr. King:
Like I just,
Speaker:
Yeah, farts are just air feces.
Dr. King:
They even destroy the ozone.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah.
Dr. King:
Not the ozone, is it the ozone? They destroy – the methane gas cow farts. Yeah. Okay. Today we’re gonna discuss a very problematic eyelid disease.
Speaker:
Oh God, I love it.
Dr. King:
The Hordeolum. In my professional opinion, it must be treated very delicately. ’cause basically it’s a great big zit on your lid. Hi. Welcome to Days of Our Eyes. I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
I’m Dr. Cha.
Dr. King:
And today we’re gonna talk about the most common lump on the eyelid. You’ve ever heard of the good old stye or a technical term Hordeolum. There’s also one called Chalazion. So what is it? Why’d you get it? How do you treat it? Stick around. We’ll let you know.
Speaker:
Okay, so first question, what is a stye/chalzion/hordeolum?
Dr. King:
So Dr. Cha
Dr. Cha:
Yes.
Dr. King:
What is a stye/chalzion/hordeolum?
Dr. Cha:
Great question. When we talk about stye,hordeolum,chalzion, we’re specifically talking about your eyelids. So the skin around the eyes, just like the skin on our face and on our bodies. There are oil glands that help moisturize and protect our skin. We have similar oil glands in our eyelids. Just like, you know, a pimple on your face or a pimple anywhere else on the body. Those things could get backed up.
Dr. King:
I never get pimples.
Dr. Cha:
Oh, I believe you
Dr. King:
Continue.
Dr. King:
By the way, these glands we’re talking about,
Speaker:
They’re so lucky.
Dr. King:
We’ve talked about ’em in other episodes. Those are the meibomian glands. Those are the ones we’re talking about in the eyelids.
Dr. Cha:
Yes. So any of the oil glands in and around the eyes. The eyelid area, the adnexa. The structure surrounding the eye itself. Those can get back to the oil glands can get backed up, they can get red and uncomfortable. You could even form a head, you know, like a pimple or a zit. Can you felt pimples on your face? Imagine it, right? You know next to your eye how uncomfortable and painful it is and how freaked out you can be when patients can be something like that happens.
Dr. King:
Yeah, that’s really thin sensitive skin. So if you get inflammation and swelling in there, you know there’s no place for it to go. So it, it hurts to blink with these things. That’s the most common thing. I’ve got this painful bump on my lid and it just showed up overnight. And that’s, that’s a Hordeolum or a Stye.
Dr. Cha:
Styes are like the, the layman or the common term for Hordeolum. Hordeolum is a medical term. And what’s the difference between a Hordeolum or stye in layman’s term Dr. King?
Dr. King:
Well, in layman’s terms, you know, Hordeolum, when it’s basically red, inflamed and infected. Now a lot of times our body will go in and fight off infection, but it can leave kind of a bump there. So it’s not red and painful anymore. But you still have a bump. That’s the Chalazian. I learned Chalazian, but he learned Chalazian. Somebody out there will correct us. Yes. So you know, we just go with, with what we can.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah,
Dr. King:
What works.
Dr. Cha:
So then a stye,
Dr. King:
One moment,
Speaker:
Oh, wait, we got it
Dr. King:
It can start like a one. Yeah, like a pimple or you can feel it kind of coming in but no head but still red and painful and then it progresses to where it gets ahead, where it’s real nice and red and juicy. I guess that’s still a stye or hordiolum them. When you get like a scar afterwards and usually scars on our faces aren’t, you know, they don’t have mass to it, but that scar tissue left over from a stye or hordiolum, that’s what the chalazian is. It won’t always end up with a chalazian. And
Dr. King:
The goal is to avoid those.
Dr. Cha:
Yes, it really is. And there are, so there are different ways to handle either of these two separate conditions,
Dr. King:
Right. So we’ve determined that we have these glands and they become infected. Whether that’s through, you know, bacteria getting up there or some sort of of debris that blocks up the gland and then you swell and get the inflammation and that kind of stuff. So then what do we do about it?
Well, we gotta open up that gland and fight off infection. Some of the best ways to do that heat, think about just a hot compress. It’s gonna increase blood circulation to that area by heating it up. Blood is drawn to that area, which is gonna help bring your immune response and start fighting off infection. It’s also gonna dilate the pores of any glands or foll hair follicles or anything that are on the lash line there. By dilating it, it lets stuff start to get out or drain out.
So something like a hot compress. And by that I don’t mean just a warm washcloth laying on your face because those cool off in seconds. So they’re not gonna transmit any heat deeper into the tissue. So you need something a little stronger.
They actually make eye masks that you can pick up in the store or on mail or online that have like a gel in them. Put ’em in the microwave for 15 seconds, they’ll stay hot for five minutes. Just lay that on there and that’s gonna help draw that out. A lot of people say, well, should I, should I use an eye drop? It’s like you can if we have some drainage, but eyedrops don’t get in there very much. You know, they’re more surface. ’cause we’re putting a drop on the eye. And remember we’re treating a problem in the eyelid, not the eyeball.
So oftentimes if it’s, if it’s pretty tender or if it’s swelling, multiple glands may be involved. If that progresses, the whole lid can become involved. And that’s called periorbital cellulitis. We have a, that’s a, that’s a upgraded stage. That right there is an upgraded stye.
Oftentimes I’ll use an oral antibiotic to get it into the bloodstream. Now we can get into the lid tissue and fight off the infection. Still using the heat along with it because the heat will help keep things softened up too. To stop that, that that hardening turning into a chalazian.
Dr. Cha:
Yes
Dr. King:
So my, one of my favorite treatments is to use an oral antibiotic. You know, if it’s warranted.
Dr. Cha:
What if I could like see the head, can I just get like my fingers or like a tweezer to like pluck it? ’cause I do that with my pimples sometimes.
Dr. King:
You really wanna do that by your eyeball yourself.
Dr. Cha:
No
Dr. King:
There’s your answer. Okay. You know, if you go to your eye doctor and they can see it, they’re under a microscope. That’s a whole different situation. But to stand there in the mirror and take a needle to it, A, not sterile. So you’re sticking a germy thing into an infected area. Let’s just add on to the infection.
There are times that they can just be, you know, drained a little bit. If we get into a a big bump situation, then they can be excised. We have surgeons in our practice that will actually in office in the eye lane, can incise cut into it, get the junk out, clean out that hard material and any other stuff around it. And then let it heal to get rid of a chalazian or a long-term bump. We don’t do that in the acute phase. You wanna do that after the infections settled down because otherwise you’re just cutting open infection.
Speaker:
How do people get these bumps on their eyelids? I know that sometimes it’s not washing their eyes. We’re not gonna talk about lash extensions in mascara in this episode.
Dr Cha:
No
Speaker:
But you know, what are those things that can cause these bumps?
Dr. King:
Anything that can introduce stuff to the lid margins that shouldn’t be there. Most commonly. Excessive eye rubbing. So you might start out with an allergy attack. Your eyes are itching. Well now you’re rubbing and boom, you’ve introduced bacteria and we get an infection.
You know, some folks will go through periods of time where, where they get a bunch of styes and that’s usually because there could be a condition called blepharitis where we actually have like a dandruff situation in the eyelids. You have to keep that stuff cleaned off or else it can breed the bacteria that can turn into the hordiolum. What else?
Dr. Cha:
Hmm. Something to say but forgot
Dr. King:
I’m so wise that my words just wash over you and you forget your own thoughts.
Speaker:
That’s it.
Dr. King:
You buy that. You buy that.
Speaker:
Yeah, for sure.
Dr. King:
Okay.
Speaker:
I know that’s what happened to me. Are they contagious?
Dr. King:
Styes are not contagious.
Dr. Cha:
If pimples were contagious then it’d be a bigger deal, right?
Dr. King:
Yeah. Although isn’t there, wasn’t there a bacteria called acne vulgaris or something like that?
Dr. Cha:
That sounds familiar actually.I don’t know.
Speaker:
I think that’s, that’s legit. Like pimples.
Dr. King:
I think that’s here. But we don’t really associate acne vulgaris with on the eyelids. That’s why like when I was a teenager and I’m getting zits here, I wasn’t necessarily getting on my eyelids. Different skin, different pore sizes, different pH to the skin, different conditions.
So when I, I started on a thought process. Some people will go through a period of their life where they’ll, they’ll just get stye a lot and then it goes away. I often hypothesize, maybe hypothesize maybe that there is, you know, some, some body chemistry changes that maybe make us a little more prone, susceptible or prone at certain times.
Dr. Cha:
Right. And your environment’s important as well during, you know, the pandemic era wore a lot of masks. Oh yeah. And so airflow right, was contained within our masks. ’cause a lot of times if the seal wasn’t tight, it flew upwards or blew upwards. There were, there are actually studies and articles and you know, prevalence studies about how, and we talked to our colleagues, there’s like, oh a bunch of people are getting hordiolums, and styes or chalazian’s now because of all the extra airflow up towards their eyes and eyelashes, it dries them out.
Dr. King:
I forgot about that
Dr. Cha:
Yep. And introduces more bacteria to our eyelashes, eyelash follicles. Those clans and people get them.
Dr. King:
I forgot about during the pandemic, the mask knee, they used to call it mask knee.
Dr. Cha:
So you know, if you work in, you know, like a healthcare environment where you are wearing masks in such hospitals, urgent cares the like emergency, you might have a higher prevalence. More instances of getting these styes. You know, the preventative measures or you know, practicing good lid hygiene is gonna be that much more important.
If you wear makeup, you know, make sure you’re doing your very best to make sure you get it all off. There are even lid scrubs, medicated scrubs; like Ocusoft Lid Scrub or Avenova solutions that are specifically formulated for the chemistry of our eyelids to really clean up and break up any oil debris that collects there.
Dr. King:
I personally do a lid scrub every day just because otherwise I will get into a blepharitis situation. So anyway, that was our bablon about styes, and chalazions.
If you like what you heard today, please hit subscribe. If you have any questions, don’t, don’t hesitate to drop us a question in the Dropbox. And in the meantime, I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
I’m Dr. Cha
Dr. King:
Have a great day.