Does It Hurt Your Eye To Use Eye Drops After Expiration Date?

It's important that you take heed of the expiration date as you may not be doing your eyes any good at all if you use them after the date that is given. To be healthy and to ensure that the medicine actually works you need to refrain from using a medicine that is not meant to be used after a particular date. There's no way of saying whether it will or won't damage your eyes, but ultimately, you should not be using the product if it has gone past its expiration date.

All eye drops, like most medicines, have expiration dates printed on their labels. It's incredibly important that you use all of your medications, not just your eye drops, according to what the labels say and according to how they had been prescribed. You should not allow the dropper tip of your eye drops to become contaminated, either, as this could allow foreign bodies and bacteria to enter your eye and cause infections.

All medications can lose potency over time, and they also change their chemical composition. Drugs can also become contaminated, and on occasion (and if left long enough) bacteria can grow in them. These are some of the reasons why you are given an expiration date, and why you should stick to that expiration date. Using drops past their date could result in you dropping bacteria from inside the bottle into your eye. For these reasons you should simply buy some more drops and not take the risk - it really isn't worth risking infecting your eyes.

Of course, you don't want to be taking drops that don't help - so if you want your medication to be effective then use it within the dates and buy more when it does expire.

My bottle of refresh tears shows an expiration date of Oct. 09 but it has never being open. Is it OK to still use it?

If you used the expired eye drops just once and it is not much expired then don't worry it will not hurt your eyes.
But if it is much expired then you must visit some eye speacialist as eyes are very sensitive portion of body.

I picked up wrong eye drops today and used an old bottle of prednisolone drops. Like 5  years expired. Should I be worried?

It is probably OK if they have been kept in a cabinet. Best not to use anything expired, though. Plus, If in a purse or somewhere heat and varied temps. Have been in place, probably not, as the bottle can emit toxins just like a water bottle can.