OPTASE Dry Eye Intense Drops

My eye doctor recommended I buy these. She said this is the safest clean eye drops. They are good, squirts well nice and slow.

Although, the drops work well for dry eyes for most people, many people complain about the bottle. They complain they need to squeeze so hard to get the first drop out, they frequently get, instead, multiple drops or a stream of drops. Why is this bottle designed this way, you might wonder. The simple answer is that in order to keep drops sterile in a multiuse bottle, the bottle had to be designed to let drops out when you squeeze, but not allow contaminants to be sucked into the bottle when you release. These contaminants could be in the air around you or on the tip of the bottle had it unintentionally touched anything. So the bottle was given a flatter dispensing end to keep the tip out of your eye. It has a blue exit point instead. (More on that latter). Inside there is a one way valve, that stays closed until you use the drops. (See picture) . When you squeeze the bottle, an extremely small flow of liquid opens the valve to allow the drop to exit, but this requires more time to deliver the drop, than a conventional bottle not having the resistance of such a valve. If you impatiently squeeze too hard, two things happen. 1. Multiple drops may be dispensed. 2. Air that is packaged in the bottle above the liquid may be forced out of the bottle along with the drops. (If the bottle his held vertically while instilling the drops, the latter is less likely to happen.) Since the valve works in only one direction, as the bottle empties and no air gets back in, a vacuum is created causing the bottle to collapse, making it more difficult to squeeze out every bit of its contents. Optase says they overfill the bottle beyond the claimed 0.33 ml, to give you a usable 0.33 ml, even though some remains in the totally collapsed bottle. Given the necessity for this design, in order to keep preservative free drops sterile, is there any easier way to dispense drops? Here is my procedure: 1. After removing the cap, be careful to keep the blue tip from touching your face or eye. 2.Imagine the blue tip to be a "bulls eye" upon which you will focus while squeezing the bottle. 3. Sit in an easy chair or sofa and steady your head backwards against the back, so that you are looking at the ceiling. 4. Hold the bottle vertically over your eye so that you can focus on the blue tip. Position the bottle so the "blue bulls eye" is in the center of your view close to your eye. 5. Squeeze the bottle with steady pressure until a drop begins to form on the blue tip. As it begins to form, the blue target becomes somewhat blurred, but continue squeezing until the drop actually drops into your eye. (Be patient while squeezing. It may take up to 15 seconds for the first drop to actually drop.) Squeezing harder will not speed this up and may result in wasted extra drops. After the first drop, the next drop will take less time. 4. After administering the drops, be sure to shake off, in a horizontal direction, any extra liquid that may remain on the blue tip. If you fail to do this before recapping the bottle, that extra drop my cause mold to form inside the cap. 5. Tighten the cap completely after use. All of this seems like a pain, especially if you are accustomed to drop bottles that contain preservatives and don't need bottle of this design. (BTW, Optase is not the only maker of preservative free drops, who use this bottle. Both BioTrue and Systane make preservative free versions in the same bottle.) Unfortunately Optase doesn't give you a choice of daily vials that Systane and BioTrue also offer. If you don't want the hassle, check out BioTrue drops in single use vials. They have nearly the same ingredients as Optase and probably work nearly as well. The downside of single use vials is they are more expensive than a multiuse bottle. Perhaps, because Optase is already so expensive in a preservative-free multiuse bottle, they don't offer single use vials. It could be most people couldn't afford them.

These drops are great! I recently underwent PRK procedure on my eyes and these drops hydrate my eyes tremendously. I used them about 3-4x a day. Highly recommend and totally worth the price.

Works well if used twice and day every day. Does not work at all if eyes are already dry. Bottle is terrible. It is impossible to dispense eye drops once the bottle is below half full. It also clogs easily and gets a black mold/fungus if you leave it in the car by accident. What was wrong with the traditional glass eye dropper?

These eye drops a great. I have issues with "Dry Eye" and coupled with the heat therapy my doctor recommenced, the Optase Dry Eye Intense Drops make my eyes feels so much better and have helped my eyes recover noticeably. These drops have a more oily consistency than regular drops and they don't just slide off my eyeball and end up on my face. I rely on them for my eye health.

Works really well. Recommended by my ophthalmologist. Really feels good when I put the drops in.

Most effective dry eye drops

I would give the drops a solid "5 stars", but the way the dispenser works is so bad I'm dededucting two stars. I have always preferred to instill drops into my lower eyelid rather then having them freefall onto my eyeball. The cap forces you to "preload" a drop, and then bombs away. Because of the blunt diameter it's very hard to avoid application onto my cheek rather than eye. The was no need to re-invent the wheel.