any over the counter treatments for conjunctivitis?

[olatt]

My little boy has what looks like the beginning of conjunctivitis. No redness yet but a little bit of gunk in the morning and a bit in the day too. Does anyone know, is there anything I can get over the counter to treat it?

My dcs have this and the lady at the chemist gave m Brolene drops for them and it is clearing their eyes up nicely, it is difficult to get it into them though as dd is 2 and ds is 1!!

I think it's advisable to have eyes checked

water and cotton wool? wipe from inner eye to outer eye once then use a diff piece if needs be

Must add that I could not get to the drs as it happened Saturday morning, so iff possible go to Drs first

thanks - will try to get him appt tomorrow morning if it looks like it's developing. I can't really tell if it's anything to worry about just yet.

We used Golden Eye ointment on DS (22 months) which worked quite well. It took 2 of us to get it into his eyes though...

Optrex now do a infected -eye solution , but not sure how old you can use it from.

Optrex infected eye is for 2 years and over but the pharmacist wouldnt give it to me

Euphrasia "Eye bright" tincture is very good - you can get it from pharmacists which do homeopathic type stuff. Put a few drops into some cooled boiled water, dip cotton pad in and wipe each eye (one wipe per eye)

This is a great preventative/stop for conjunctivitis, i use it whenever there is conjunctivitis going round the nursery.

can you nip it in the bud, then, do you think? we're really not sure whether this is the real thing or not - he had it before and it seemed to come on much quicker. this time there have been sort of symptoms, but nothing definite, hanging around for days.

You can get the antibiotic drops over the counter, but they won't sell you them if it's for a baby under 2.

I know, as on Christmas eve, we went all the way to boots to get ds some drops, they wouldn't sell them to us, so spent hours waiting at the out of hours dr, to be given EXACTLY th same drops!!

This whole charade was repeated on new years eve, when I went down with it, and stupidly mentioned to the pharmacist that I wear contact lenses.

nightmare! he got his first bout just before we went away for christmas on a big trip that involved lots of driving and staying with lots of families with kids. perfect! timing is always impeccable. he's 21 months so no luck there then.

We got some over the counter drops for dd1 who had it 2 weeks ago.

Went to the doctor the next day who wrote a prescription for antibiotic eyedrops, but he suggested keeping the prescription and waiting a few days to see if it cleared up first, as he'd just read a recent paper suggesting that there was evidence they didn't really help much. He said by all means to keep going with the over the counter drops.

It cleared up within maybe 5 days.

yes you can nip it in the bud,
even by just cleaning the eye with cool boiled water and a bit of salt in it.

I would second using cooled boiled water, cotton wool balls (clean one for each eye to avoid spreading infection). Do this for a couple of days and see how it goes. If it continues then trip to GP in case antibiotics are need for infection.
Most of the drops that GP will prescribed are mostly only water and salt drops anyhow.

the optrex medicated eyes drops have exactly the same ingredient in exactly the same concentration as you would get on prescription from your gp. 5% chloramphenicol. otherwise it would mean taking time off work blah, blah.

the last time i got i, i told the doc it was for my dh as my eyes didn't look like they needed it.