Pre‐wetted modified Schirmer’s tear test to determine lacrimal tear‐production rate from severe lacrimal‐gland dysfunction patients

The developed PW-MSTT successfully quantifies basal tear production rates from subjects that do not adequately wet the Schirmer strip without the new prewetting technique. The determined basal tear-production rate from these low tear-producing subjects was three times less than that of those from a previous study where the subjects could adequately wet the Schirmer strip past the 5-mm line. Our improved methodology for low tear-producing patients sheds insight into how basal tear production rate is related to aqueous-deficient dry-eye symptoms.