PF eye drops that contain oilsUpdated 2 hours ago
About oil-containing eye drops
Many brands of eye drops contain one or more oils, including major national brands from B&L, Alcon and Abbvie as well as smaller and newer brands.
Compare by oil concentrations
Unfortunately, many companies are using nonstandard labeling which makes it impossible to compare ingredients accurately. In fact, only two state the oil concentration. Here are all the oil-containing preservative-free eye drops we found:
Product | Mineral oil | Light mineral oil | Castor oil | Other oil |
| Optase Dry Eye Spray | Sea buckthorn seed oil Undisclosed amount | |||
| Optase MGD | Sacha Inchi Seed Oil Undisclosed amount | |||
| Refresh Digital | X Undisclosed amount | |||
| Refresh Optive Advanced | X Undisclosed amount | |||
| Refresh Optive MEGA | X Undisclosed amount | Flaxseed oil Undisclosed amount | ||
| Retaine MGD | 0.5% | 0.5% | ||
| Rohto Dry Aid | X Undisclosed amount | Sesame oil Undisclosed amount | ||
| Soothe XP (discontinued) | 4.5% | 1.0% | ||
| Systane Complete | X Undisclosed amount | |||
| Systane Pro | X Undisclosed amount |
Compare visually (milkiness factor)
Vials
As you can see, millkiness alone is not a clear indicator. Soothe XP and Retaine MGD look pretty similar, but Soothe XP contained 9x as much mineral oil and twice as much light mineral oil. Refresh Optive Advanced (which is the same as Refresh Digital) has a slightly milky look, which may be the castor oil. Refresh MEGA has a very slight milkiness in comparison to a fully clear drop (such as the one on the left end which we included for comparison) though it's not easy to detect in the photo.
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Bottles
The only oil-containing preservative-free eye drops that appear at all milky are Systane Complete and Systane Pro. In real life, Systane Complete is quite noticeably "milkier" than Systane Pro.
User tip
Our position on oil-containing eye drops is that regardless of your type of dry eye, we still recommend judging eye drops by experience. Do they feel good? Do they improve your symptoms long enough to be worth it? Those are key yardsticks, because symptom management is such an important role for eye drops.
Some of these oil containing drops are very popular, clearly well-liked. If an emollient eye drop with oils works for you, great! If it doesn't, find something that does.