Light has been used as a medical treatment for centuries. But, is light therapy a new normal in eye care? In the early 1920s, H. Riley Spitler, DOS, MD, MS, PhD, started a movement that he called Syntonics using light therapy to help the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (https://csovision.org/history ). He joined his knowledge of the retina, brain, and body to show how light could have a positive impact.

Benefits in Eye Care

We’ve all heard that outdoor time can be beneficial to stop or delay the incidence of myopia in children (Cao et al, 2020). It appears that something about the light from the sun stops the eye from elongating.

Low-level light therapy (LLLT) can treat dry eye disease and meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD). In eye care, LLLT involves the minimally invasive, continuous application of low-powered (usually below 500mW), diffuse red to near-infrared light energy to the tissues around the eye to promote tissue repair, decrease inflammation, and produce analgesia (de Freitas and Hamblin, 2016). As the light penetrates deeper into the skin, athermal photoactivation occurs. The light appears to interact with tissues directly at the molecular and cellular level (de Freitas and Hamblin, 2016).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently cleared an intense pulsed light (IPL) device in eye care. IPL utilizes repeated pulses of light in the 500nm-to-600nm range that are applied to the skin around the eyes (Toyos et al, 2016) (Figure 1). In contrast with LLLT, the presumed mechanism of action of IPL is essentially thermal (Stonecipher et al, 2019). A wide range of effects have been reported such as the destruction of telangiectatic blood vessels on the eyelid and subsequent reduction of inflammation, eradication of Demodex folliculorum mites on the lid, modulation of inflammatory mediators, and temporary warming of the meibomian glands (Stonecipher et al, 2019). It is most often used in conjunction with meibomian gland expression, although recent studies have begun to look at the combination of IPL and LLLT to treat dry eye and MGD (Stonecipher et al, 2019).

The Verdict

If you have not looked into light therapy, you may be missing the new wave of an old standby in eye care. As research continues, we predict that light therapy will gain in popularity and will become a new normal. CLS

For references, please visit www.clspectrum.com/references and click on document #312.