Eye Drops & Lubricants

Eye Drops and Lubricants

Eye Drops and Lubricants is the widest shelf on this site. It gathers artificial tears, gels, nighttime ointments and the small accessories that go with them. Refresh, Systane, TheraTears, Blink, GenTeal Tears, Oasis Tears, Optase, OCuSOFT and Thea all appear here, alongside specialty names such as Freshkote and the organic Eyeganics range. If you arrived from a broad search, the fastest way to narrow things down is to work out which of the six groups below you are actually shopping.

What you will find

• Eye Drops is the general shelf, mostly multi dose bottles of lubricating drops and artificial tears.
• PF Individual Vials are preservative free formulas in single use vials. You open a fresh vial and discard it after use, so nothing has to be added to keep the liquid stable in the container.
• PF Multi-Dose Bottles are preservative free formulas in a bottle instead, using a valve or filter design rather than single use packaging. Systane COMPLETE PF, Freshkote PF and the Oasis Tears bottles sit here.
• Ointments and Liquid Gels are the thicker formats. They stay put longer than a watery drop and can blur vision for a while, which is why most of them are packaged and labeled for nighttime use.
• Contact Drops are formulas labeled for use while lenses are in, such as Refresh Relieva for Contacts.
• Dropper Tips holds accessories rather than liquid. Nanodropper and Precision Dropper adaptors fit onto a bottle and change the size of the drop it releases.

A few products on this page are not lubricants at all. Over the counter antihistamine drops such as Pataday, Alaway, Naphcon A and Opcon-A are listed here, as are redness drops such as Lumify. They are a different kind of product, so read the box carefully to be sure which one you have picked up.

How to choose

Three questions cover most of it. Preserved or preservative free: a preservative is what keeps a bottle usable once it has been opened, and preservative free packaging leaves it out altogether, which is why shoppers who reach for drops often tend to look for the PF groups. Thin or thick: a watery drop leaves vision clear right away, while a gel or ointment is heavier and is generally sold for bedtime. Lenses or no lenses: if you wear contacts, check that the label says the formula can go in with the lenses in place.

Sizes, packs and formulas

Most families come in more than one size. Bottles run from roughly 8 mL to 30 mL, and vials are commonly boxed in thirties, with two box bundles on several Refresh, Freshkote and GenTeal items for people who have already settled on a product. Formulas differ too. Some are hyaluronic acid based, some carry an oil component such as Refresh Optive Mega-3, and some keep the ingredient list very short, which is the whole idea behind Eyeganics.

None of that tells you which one suits your eyes. Your optometrist or ophthalmologist can see what is going on and point you at the right shelf, and if you were given a specific product name at your last visit, searching that name here is the surest way to land on it.