Graves’ Disease Treatment

Your ophthalmologist will examine your eyes and keep track of your symptoms. If your eyes continue to protrude or eyelids retract, treatment may be needed.

Here are some treatment options:

• Relieve dry eye symptoms with artificial tears or a lubricating ointment.
• Take steroid medicine to control eye muscle swelling.
• Wear sunglasses to help with light sensitivity.
• Put cool compresses on the eyes to help reduce irritation and swelling.
• Wear special eyeglasses with prisms in the lenses to help reduce double vision.

Smoking can make symptoms worse. Quitting smoking may help relieve the severity of your symptoms.

Your ophthalmologist may recommend surgery to help fix eye muscle problems from Graves’ disease. Here are some surgery options:

• Reposition eyelid muscles to fix eyelid retraction, relieving dry eye and improving how the eye looks.
• Reposition the eye, the eye muscles or both to help improve vision and the bulging eye appearance.
• Remove scar tissue from eye muscles to improve how those muscles work.
• Relieve pressure on the optic nerve to prevent vision loss.

If you have Graves’ disease, talk with your ophthalmologist about ways to relieve your symptoms.