Conjunctivitis - does it always need to be treated with eye drops?

[Gunnerbean]

My DS (8) has woken this morning complaining of a sore eye. The bottom part of the white of just oe of his eyes seems a bit blood shot ad he has been rubbing it a lot. There was no discharge and his eye was not remotely "gunked up" with any sort of puss or matter.

As the day has worn on he has continued to complain about it and it doesn;t seem to have got any worse really - still no discharge.

I googled conjunctivitis and read on the BBC health website that it has 3 causes, bacterial (that's where the puss and matter comes into the equation), allergic, or viral. The doctor on there seemed to think that only the bacterial type needs drops and that other types will sort themselves out.

Has anyone else got ay thoughts on this? I don't want to be running to the doctors i teh morning for drops that will make no real difference.

The thing is, in my expereince, kids look for, and almost expect to be given, something to take when they've got something wrong with them. So I know that in this situation drops would go some way to cutting out some of the moaning and would have a placebo affect . I wish I had some Optrex in the house but I haven't and you can't get anything on a bloody Sunday night aroud here!!

If it's not gunked up I would assume it's viral, in which case antiBs no point in them.

Okay, I expect to get flamed, but when viral or even when it's bacterial I don't do antiBs any more (one exception was I used saline solution on a little baby, that did clear up sticky eye when nothing else would). I had friends who said they didn't bother with antiBs for their toddlers I was very surprised, they are (were) very conventional people. But I decided to give it a try and it worked. Don't treat, don't touch, it goes away on it's own (IME).

Key thing is not to wipe it. I'm serious, don't touch at all. Might splash away the gunk in the bath.
It has never spread within the family, in spite of my approach some would label wildly reckless.
And yet it has always cleared on its own, typically after 5-7 days.
I give paracetomol if child/tot seems quite bothered by it.

Just my experience, make of it what you will.

ps: I believe viral cj, what your child seems to have, is the esp. contagious kind of cj, be very diligent on hand washing.