Desert dry eye is real — here's how to treat it like it is.
Las Vegas has one of the harshest evaporative-stress environments in the U.S. for the tear film. Most local dry-eye care is still "drops and good luck." Ours won't be.
This is a working draft. The full article will publish at opening — a brief preview below.
The Vegas climate, in numbers
Relative humidity averages 15–30% across the year. Outdoor temperatures spike past 105°F for stretches of summer. Daily UV index sits in "very high" or "extreme" for most of April through October. That's a combination that drives tear-film evaporation, meibomian gland dysfunction, and surface inflammation faster than virtually any other major U.S. metro.
Drops alone don't fix this
Artificial tears are symptomatic relief. They're not a treatment plan. A real dry-eye workup separates aqueous-deficient dry eye from evaporative dry eye, identifies meibomian gland dropout, and matches a treatment plan to the underlying mechanism.
What a proper workup looks like
- Patient questionnaire (OSDI / SPEED)
- Tear break-up time (TBUT)
- Meibography on indication
- Osmolarity testing where clinically warranted
- Lid margin and gland expression evaluation
- Corneal staining with fluorescein / lissamine green
Full article publishes at opening. If you're struggling with dry eye now, get on the waitlist — we'll prioritize dry-eye consults in our first weeks.