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What Your Eye Care Professional May Do
With many eye conditions, the problem is obvious. We notice that we're having trouble reading road signs from a distance or that we have to hold the book a little farther away to bring the words into focus. But other eye conditions are more subtle. We may not know we have them until our eyesight has been damaged beyond repair. The best way of preventing an eyesight problem is to diagnose it early so that treatment can be started before any real damage is done. That's why eye care professionals recommend regular, thorough eye examinations according to the following schedule:
Children: First examination by 6 months; the next by age 3 to 3-1/2, and thereafter as directed by your eye care professional.
Late teens: Contact lens wearers, as directed by your eye care professional; once every one to two years for non-contact lens wearers.
Age 35+: Once a year or as directed. If you have any immediate eye-related symptoms, see your eye care professional right away.
Why a thorough eye exam?
A look into your eyes provides an open window on your general health.
Your health history and lifestyle
A thorough eye examination yields far more information than you might expect. Not only does it provide your eye care professional with information to diagnose and treat eye conditions, but it may also provide clues about your general health. The first step in any complete eye examination is a review of your health history and of any symptoms you may be experiencing. You'll be asked about your work, interests, and health. Your occupation and hobbies will give your eye care professional an idea of the conditions in which you need your eyes to work best. And your medical history will alert your eye care professional to any illnesses you may already be aware of or that run in your family.
The examination
Your eye care professional may next determine whether your vision has changed since your last appointment by using the eye chart to test your eyes — both with and without your current glasses or contact lenses. A thorough examination would address:
- What, if any, optical (lens) prescription you need for vision correction
- How well your eyes work together
- The internal and external health of your eyes
- Your peripheral vision
- An evaluation of the pressure of the eyes
Determining your eyeglass prescription
Most likely, the eye care professional will begin the actual examination by determining whether you need vision correction — and if so, the lens prescription that you need. To do this, he or she may use a retinoscope to shine a light through your pupil from approximately arm's length. (The dark spot in the center of the colored part of the eye, the pupil is actually a hole. It's black because the eye is dark inside.) The light is reflected from the back of the eye. By moving the light from side to side and up and down and by noting the direction and movement of the reflection, the eye care professional begins to determine the "prescription" or optical lens power that you need to obtain clearest vision. This prescription is further refined when you are asked to look through several lenses and identify which ones provide the clearest vision. By this stage, your eye care professional will have identified whether you are nearsighted, farsighted, having trouble focusing on things close up due to the normal aging process, astigmatic, or have a combination of two or more of these conditions.
Evaluating your eyes' teamwork
Perhaps you aren't farsighted, nearsighted, or astigmatic. But if your eyes aren't working well together, impaired vision can be the result. To detect eyes that are not synchronized, your eye care professional will conduct tests for conditions that result when eyes do not work in tandem. Among those conditions are:
- Strabismus, the inability of one eye to coordinate with the other eye, usually because of an imbalance in the muscles of the eyeball. The result is that both eyes do not point simultaneously at the object being viewed.
- Heterophorias, in which the eyes have a small misalignment for which the visual system normally compensates. If the heterophoria is too much for the visual system to correct comfortably, you could experience headaches or fatigue, and the "phoria" could break down into a strabismus when you are tired or ill.
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| EYE CONDITIONS | | | Get the facts you need to know | | | Read More > | |
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