Aids for eye drop administration

Abstract

One aspect to eye drop adherence is successful instillation of the drops; however, it is well known that many patients struggle with this task. Difficulties may include aiming their drops, extending their neck, preventing excess drop leakage, avoiding contamination of the bottle tip, and generating enough force to expel a drop from the bottle. Instillation aids are devices that aim to ameliorate one or more of these barriers. We review the literature on instillation aids to describe the options available to patients and to report evaluations of their efficacy. Most instillation aids studied improved objective or subjective outcomes of eye drop instillation, including improved rates of successful administration and increased patient satisfaction compared with standard eye-drop bottles. Although further research is warranted, instillation aids may be an underutilized resource for the many patients who struggle to administer their own eye drops.

Keywords: adherence; administration aids; compliance; glaucoma; medical devices; ophthalmic solutions; self-administration.