This 7 year old Cocker Spaniel has a mucoid discharge from both eyes, worse first thing in the morning. The owner considered that he had an ocular infection but topical antibiotic ointment has had no effect. What is the likely diagnosis, how would you test for it and what treatment would you use?
This dog has keratoconjunctivitis sicca or dry eye and the diagnostic test is the Schirmer tear test. This dog had a tear wetting of 3mm in one minute demonstrating dry eye to be the problem.A tear replacement such as Viscotears would be useful initially but the optimal treatment is topical cyclosporine in Optimmune, given twic edaily as a direct lacrimogenic agent.