How to punctal occlude (important for medicated eye drops)

Days in and days out, I see many patients who need to use medicated eye drops, some need eye drops for allergies, some need eye drops because they just got eye surgery and some need eye drops every day for years because they have glaucoma. When eye drops go into your eyes, with each blink, the liquid gets pushed towards the inner corners of your eyes and drains down to your nose and to the back of your throat. So the medication you use only stays in your eye for a brief period, this can limit the bioavailability of the medication because it only had little time to be absorbed. When the medication drains down your nose, it also gets absorbed by your body and could have systemic side effects.
Punctal occlusion is a simple technique where you gently press your finger near the inner corner of your eyes to temporarily block the tear drainage. This way, the medication eye drops stay in your eyes for longer hence increasing its bioavailability, hence better absorption, and less medication is absorbed by your body, so fewer systemic side effects. Alternatively, you also gently close your eyes after instilling the eye drops, it will also do the trick. I see some literature recommends 1-2 min of punctual occlusion, and some recommend 5 min. I don't feel this technique is talked about enough. Medicated eye drops are expensive! You want to make maximum use of every drop!
Here is a link to a scientific article that talked about the technique for instilling glaucoma eye drops, it applies to pretty much all medicated eye drops:
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
I'm Dr. Sunny, I'm an optometrist.
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[@ezekielquindo7672]

thanks for this video

[@lindamalcolm2588]

These eye drops are making me feel very sick , have to stop them going into system 🙈

[@lindamalcolm2588]

But but the drops slide from the left towards the tear ducts , is that a good thing ?

[@DaysInTheClinic]

Sorry for the delayed reply, for those who are wondering, once the eye drop goes into your eye, it is going to spread around regardless, so it is okay ~