What Causes Swelling, Redness And Itching Below Lower Eyelid

Posted on Fri, 5 Dec 2014

Question: My wife has swelling and redness plus itching below the lower eye lid and it rolls into eye ball and it is also red. This has been ongoing for weeks. we have been to eye doctors to no help even though they say surgery should be done we don't think ok if infection exists. They haven't said it is infection but we feel it has to be. It even has begun on the other eye.

Answered by Dr. Dadapeer K (33 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
It seems like entropion, it requires surgery.

Detailed Answer:
Hello

Welcome to Health care Magic.

I am Dr. DADAPEER K, an Ophthalmologist and I answer health problems related to eye.

I reviewed your history. It seems from the history that your wife is having inrolling of the lower eyelid into the eye ball. This is called as entropion and entropion will cause symptoms of swelling and redness because of constant irritation by the eyelashes rubbing against the eye ball.
This needs to be corrected by lid surgery to correct the entropion.
Hence your doctors are right in suggesting a eye lid surgery to correct the entropion.
Depending on the type of entropion the surgery needs to be planned.
If there is infection it needs to be treated with antibiotic eye drops and eye ointments. You can use the tobramycin antibiotic eye drops and erythromycin eye ointment for this purpose. However the definitive treatment to prevent recurrences is corrective entropion surgery.

If possible do send a photo of the affected eye so that I can confirm the diagnosis and advice you more accurately.

Hope the information is helpful to you.

Thank you
With regards

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Vinay Bhardwaj