Chalazion or Styes are super annoying swellings of the oil glands that cause patients to have a large bump or mass on their eyelid. At our practice in Denver, we treat patients for styes commonly. Most patients who have styes don’t know what the options are. When a patient has a stye these are the different treatment protocols that are offered to patients:

1. Observation and Warm Compresses

This is often given to patients who recently have a stye show up on their eyelid. Often this is the best initial treatment. How does one do a warm compress on your eyelid? The simplest technique is to take dry rice in a sock and place it in a microwave for a few seconds. Then place the sock over the eyelid for 15 minutes. This works the best if it is done 4 times a day. There is a 90% chance that most styes will go away using this technique over a month.

1. Steroid Injection

A Steroid injection works by shrinking the oil duct and reducing the inflammation surrounding a stye. Often it can shrink small styes or even make them go away completely. Stye treatment with kenalog is often done and can work well for small styes. Especially early on the disease process, it can effectively get rid of styes.

1. Simple Excision of Stye

Stye removal is something that is often done in the office. The eyelid is usually everted and the stye material is removed. This procedure takes about 15 minutes to do. This is often performed if the stye is not self resolving after a month or so.

1. Wedge resection of stye

Sometimes when there is a stye that Is lingering or causes scar formation especially after simple excision I will perform a wedge resection. This is a surgical procedure where the portion of the eyelid with the stye is removed and stitches are placed. Stitches are removed in 10 days.

Styes are one of the most common things that are treated at our practice. It is something that can be very annoying but fortunately can be treated relatively easily in most cases.