HOW TO TREAT BROKEN BLOOD VESSEL IN EYE: What you need to do if you have blood in your eye due to broken eye blood vessels. Sometimes this will be referred to as bloodshot eye or a subconjunctival hemorrhage.

What if I have a broken blood vessel or popped blood vessel in my eye and it is bleeding. How do you treat this?

This video will explain what a broken blood vessel or subconjunctival hemorrhage means and how to treat it.

Does your eye look like mine, if it does, you might have a subconjunctival hemorrhage and today I'm going to tell you what that is and what you can and what you need to do about it. I'm Dr. Michael Nelson and this is good optometry morning.
So what is a subconjunctival hemorrhage. Let's break it down into terms. So it talks about the conjunctiva, it is the clear multilayered loose tissue that sits over top of the white part of the eye and the conjunctiva has lots of little tiny blood vessels that run through it. And if one of those blood vessels breaks you will get a little hemorrhage hence the name subconjunctival hemorrhage but basically a subconjunctival hemorrhage is a fancy name for a bruise.

So if you get a bruise on your arm or on your leg you get a broken blood vessel underneath the skin and it appears black or blue because you see it through the skin. Now when you get one on the conjunctiva the tissue is clear and so it appears red. What causes a subconjunctival hemorrhage. I've got the seven most common reasons for a subconjunctival hemorrhage and I will list them in order of the least to the most common reasons that I have seen in my clinic.

So reason number one is some type of surgery to the eye. Now this is the least common reason why I see in my clinic because usually people can figure out I had some type of surgery and that's probably why they have this little hemorrhage. So this will typically be any type of surgery where they make an incision on the white part of your eye. This will include any type of retinal surgery including injections inside the eye. It can also include refractive surgery because sometimes that pressure that they use for some of the instruments can cause a break in one of the blood vessels. It typically won't happen in cataract surgery but it can because cataract surgery usually makes an incision right in the cornea where there's no blood vessels.

Reason two is some type of bleeding disorder. Now when most people think of bleeding disorders they immediately think of hemophilia but hemophilia is actually pretty rare. There's actually a more common bleeding disorder which you've probably never heard of. It's called Von Willebrand disease. And basically these conditions are conditions where your blood does not clot as easily and so you're going to be more prone to get bruising including bruising on your eye.

Reason number three. High blood pressure. If you have uncontrolled or higher blood pressure that's going to mean that your blood vessels are going to more likely have a break in them and cause a little hemorrhage and so uncontrolled blood pressure could cause a hemorrhage like this.

Reason number four you're taking an anticoagulant or some type of medication that's a blood thinner. When most people are taking a blood thinner because they have some underlying heart condition or they are at risk for developing strokes. And so these will slow down your ability to clot. And so you will be more prone to develop bruising. There's a whole bunch of these blood thinners but probably the most common one that people are on that they may not realize is a blood thinner is a baby aspirin.

Reason number five is related to number three in blood pressure but basically anything that can cause a sudden increase of your blood pressure to your head can cause a hemorrhage like this. This can include anything like coughing sneezing vomiting straining heavy lifting anything that will cause a temporary increase to the blood pressure could cause a hemorrhage like this.

Number six is a pretty obvious one. Any type of trauma. If you get hit in the eye you are more likely to get some type of bruise.

And number seven. And by far this is the most common reason that I see in the clinic of why people get this is under the category of idiopathic idiopathic is a medical term for when some type of condition occurs. But we don't have an explanation why. Basically we don't know. But seriously we've ruled out all the other serious conditions and we know it's there but we don't really have an explanation. Idiopathic subconjunctival hemorrhage is probably the most common reason that I'll see in my clinic for these hemorrhages.

Have a great optometry day.

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