Styes

Your child goes to bed fine, and in the morning, one of his/her eyelids looks a little red/swollen and is a little sore when he/she blinks, but there is no redness of the whites of the eyes or any drainage from the eyes.  Sounds suspicious for a stye.  A stye is just a blockage of one of the glands that produces the secretions that is supposed to keep the eyelashes nice and soft.  It’s not an infection.

What can cause styes?  The most direct reason is irritation along the lash line whether from eye makeup or eye rubbing with dirty hands or when it’s dirty in that area of the face or any similar reason.  To prevent recurrent styes, it’s best to teach your children to not rub their eyes unless they’ve first washed their hands, to not share eye makeup and to change out eye makeup regularly (if applicable), and if they’re really frequent, to regularly clean along the closed lash lines x 10-15 seconds with a dampened cotton ball and 1-2 drops of baby shampoo.

Once you have a stye, the best treatment is hot compresses -- not just comfortably warm, and of course not hot enough to cause burns, but hotter than what actually is comfortable.  A good rule of thumb is probably to let the tap water run as hot as it’ll get and thoroughly soak a paper towel or washcloth and then squeeze it out so it’s just damp and apply to the affected eye for 5-10 minutes.  At that time, it’ll have cooled down to comfortably warm, which means … you guessed it, you have to heat it up again.  After enough cycles of reheating and reapplying the hot compress to add up to 20-30 minutes of “on the eye” time, that “session” is done.  You may need to allow your child to be entertained with a video or other show to keep them from fighting the compress, and it’s best if it is a parent/adult holding the compress on rather than even relying on even an older child to keep it in place appropriately.  An adolescent maybe can be trusted to follow the instructions accurately.  Repeat these “sessions” twice a day, and usually by the end of the 2nd or 3rd day the stye should clearly be improving.  If you wear eye make up, you shouldn’t until after the stye has resolved, and you should exchange all your eye makeup for fresh products before starting to wear eye make up again.

However, sometimes stye resolution can take longer.  There is no indication for treatment other than hot compresses unless the whites of the eyes turn red, drainage develops, or the redness of the eyelid becomes a clearly delineated distinct red large bump on the eyelid.  If any of those symptoms develop then the child needs to actually be seen by a medical professional for a more detailed evaluation.  There is no evidence that over-the-counter “stye medication” actually helps.