My 5-year old grandson has been blinking his eyes a lot recently and making a facial grimace. He has been on albuterol via nebulizer for about three months now. During the treatments, some of the vapor escapes from the mask and goes up to his eyes, and I have been wondering if that is causing a problem with his eyes. I've seen my grandson rubbing his eyes sometimes. This eye blinking was mentioned during a recent visit to his pediatrician who dismissed it as some kind of "tick." I am not convinced that it is just a tick. Our pharmacist says that long-term use of albuterol can cause nervousness.

Glen

 

I tell all my patients when they get prescribed a new drug to plug the name into a search engine and see what comes up. Usually the first hit will be the manufacturers web page and then a lot of other sites will follow. When I tried with Albuterol, I got 1,780,000 hits. You can also narrow your search with additional parameters like "side effects" and "eye irritation risk" and so on.

 

At http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/DVH/Uses/0,3915,718%7CAlbuterol+Inhaler,00.html it states "Do not get the aerosol spray in your eyes." Every precaution must be taken to keep the child from getting the vapor in the child's eyes. Please explain to the child that he must keep his eyes closed very, very tight. If he fails to cooperate, place a sleep mask over the eyes.

If symptoms do not improve after keeping the vapor out of the child's eyes, get a second physician's opinion. The tick may well be a nervous tick secondary to the Albuterol. Since you indicate that the child is having problems with the eyes, first keep the vapor out of the eyes to see if there is improvement.

 

Your grandson might be ready or old enough to use the inhaler. See if he can be switched to that.

My son used the nebulizer before for a while at a young age too. He didn't seem to be affected by it (in his eyes). The nervousness happened more to his body.

Good to get a second opinion and perhaps switch to the inhaler.

 

i had similar experience as DIYaddict with my daughter as well. I do not remember any eye irritation. Doesn't mean your g-son isn't affected this way, simply that my daughter wasn't.

Although the nebulized vapor is somewhat inconsistant in where is flows, you might try a position that tends to allow the vapor to float away from his face. If you have someplace with a breeze (small fan would help here) this would actually blow the vapor away from his face. Don't have too much of a breeze since this could actually blow through the vents on the mask and blow away the vapor he needs to be inhaling.

Our daughter often simply just relaxed with eyes closed during treatment. Not alot you can do with that thing on your face anyway.

 

Thank you everyone for your responses. I will take your suggestions under advisement.

 

To Glen B,

I had similar concerns for my son that was then 6 and was told by my doctor that the excessive eye blinking and grimacing was "most likely just a tick and he would grow out of it". I was very frustrated and decided to go to an opthamologist. What do you know, he desperately needed eyeglasses. He couldn't see very well and didn't know to tell me that he couldn't see very well because he was a little kid and didn't know that what he was seeing wasn't normal. It also turned out that he has mild to moderate color blindness. He has been wearing glasses since that time and doesn't like to be without them. I love our pediatrician, but I think they dropped the ball on this one and I had to rely on my parental instincts. I happened upon this site because he is back to blinking and grimacing a lot more lately and I am looking for some reasons. It can be very scary out here looking for reasons. He has had cough variant asthma since he was a baby and has grown out of it about 95 percent. However, I was plugging in his symptoms with the drugs he has taken to see if there might be any long term side effects from when he was on flovent, singulair and albuterol. I haven't found any yet, but I am not content to accept that it is just a tick and there isn't any cause. I will keep looking and I hope that you found your reason as well. I will be taking my son to the opthamologist again soon to talk about this and see if maybe his prescription for his eyeglasses has changed and he is just trying to focus. I am hoping that is all that it is. I am open to anyones insights, we parents have to stick together.