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.

There is a new medicine (teprotumumab-trbw) available to treat Graves’ disease. This medicine:

• is given by infusion (put in body through a vein)
• helps relieve eye symptoms associated with thyroid eye disease
• may eliminate the need for some corrective eye surgeries

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.