HealthInfo Waitaha Canterbury
Thyroid eye disease
Matenga repe tenga ki te karu
Thyroid eye disease is a condition where the muscles and soft tissues around and behind your eyes become swollen.
This usually happens when you have an over-active thyroid gland that makes too much thyroid hormone. This is called hyperthyroidism.
Occasionally, thyroid eye disease can happen in people who do not have hyperthyroidism.
Symptoms of thyroid eye disease
All symptoms happen because of swollen tissue around your eye and within your eye socket.
Most people have a mild form of the disease, which causes irritation, redness or dryness at the front of their eyes.
A few people get worse problems, including bulging and "staring" eyes and double vision (if their eye muscles are affected).
In advanced cases, which are extremely rare, vision may be affected with:
- colours appearing more washed out
- blurred vision, loss of detailed vision and loss of vision.
Treating thyroid eye disease
You'll need to have treatment for your overactive thyroid to get your hormones back to normal levels.
If you smoke, stop immediately. Smoking makes thyroid eye disease worse.
Other treatments will depend on how bad your eye disease is and can include:
- lubricating eye drops or ointments to help with dry eyes
- special glasses with prism lenses to help with double vision
- steroids (either injections or oral steroids) if you have double vision or your optic nerve is compressed
- medicines to suppress your immune system (immunosuppressive medicine).
Rarely, some people need surgery to:
- remove some of the swollen tissue from behind their eyes
- improve the position of their eyelids
- reposition their eye muscles to reduce double vision.
Long-term outcomes
Thyroid eye disease eventually settles down, but it can take two to three years to completely get better.
HealthInfo recommends the following pages
- American Thyroid Association – Graves' Eye Disease
A page that answers frequently asked questions about Graves' eye disease and explains what it is.
- British Thyroid Foundation – Thyroid eye disease
An accessible online guide to thyroid eye disease.
Written by HealthInfo clinical advisers. Last reviewed March 2023.
Sources
Review key: HITYE-263797
