Do your eyes feel irritated, gritty, or red? Burning, excessive tearing, or occasional blurry vision? These are common signs of dry eye — when your eyes don’t produce enough tears, or the tears they produce aren’t the right quality.

The New York City Dry Eye Institute at Mostafavi Eye specializes in state-of-the-art diagnostics and treatment, including Autologous Serum Drops, IPL laser, and Amniotic Membrane placement.

Common risk factors include diuretics or antihistamines, contact lens wear, recent LASIK, multiple glaucoma drops, thyroid dysfunction, menopause, and long days at the computer. If you’re at risk, we’ll run the tests needed to pinpoint the cause and build a treatment plan tailored to you.

Think you might have dry eye? Let’s talk.

Autologous Serum Eye Drops are a natural treatment for severe or chronic dry eye and corneal defects, made from the patient’s own blood serum — which naturally contains the stem cells, growth factors, platelets, proteins, enzymes, and Vitamin A also found in our tears.

The process is straightforward: a trained technician performs a blood draw, runs it through a centrifuge to isolate the serum, and dispenses it into four sterile, preservative-free bottles — three for the freezer at home, one in the refrigerator ready to use. Patients typically apply one drop per eye, one to four times daily as prescribed.

Because the drops contain no preservatives, hygiene matters: always wash hands first, and never let the dropper touch the eye, skin, or tissues. In the days before your blood draw, drink plenty of water and avoid fatty or greasy foods — they can reduce the drops’ effectiveness.

Ask the Mostafavi Eye Institute team if Autologous Serum Eye Drops might be right for you.

Most dry eye isn’t a tear-production problem — it begins in the meibomian glands, the tiny oil glands along the edge of your eyelids. When inflammation clogs them, the oil layer that keeps tears from evaporating breaks down, and your eyes feel burning, gritty, and tired by the end of the day.

Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) treats that root cause. Precise pulses of light applied to the skin around the eyes calm inflammation, close off the abnormal blood vessels feeding it, and warm the glands so their natural oils flow freely again. Treatment takes only a few minutes in our office, requires no downtime, and is typically done as a short series with periodic maintenance.

If artificial tears alone haven’t given you lasting relief, ask us whether IPL is right for you.

Once we identify the underlying cause of your dry eye, we’ll build a flexible treatment plan around it. Environmental or behavioral fixes can be simple — slowing a ceiling fan, blinking more during screen time, increasing water intake, or adding omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin A to your diet.

When tear production is the issue, Dr. Mostafavi may prescribe medicated eye drops, artificial tears, gels, or ointments. Punctal plugs are another option — they block the tear drainage canal to keep more tears on the eye.

If your dry eye stems from another condition — contact lens wear, inflamed or clogged eyelid glands — we’ll treat that root cause too, with anything from at-home lid hygiene to in-office procedures. Let’s find what works for you.

Serum Drops

Eye drops made from your own blood. After we draw blood in our office, red blood cells and clotting factors are separated out, leaving pure serum rich in platelet-rich plasma — your body’s own tear substitute, with growth factors and nutrients absent in dry tears.

IPL

Intense Pulsed Light delivers precise light pulses to the skin under the eye, targeting the root cause of inflammation. Effective, gentle, and safe for meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye.

Amniotic Membrane

Derived from newborn placenta, amniotic membranes have natural anti-inflammatory and anti-scarring properties that quickly relieve symptoms, reduce ocular-surface inflammation, and restore the cornea to a healthy state.