Regardless of what stage of life you are in or how well you see, an annual eye exam with a licensed eye doctor is necessary to protect your vision. In fact, yearly eye exams are just as important as annual physical exams or routine dental visits.
Eye conditions are best minimized and corrected through early detection. Current technology offers patients many innovative solutions without the invasive procedures used in the past. Our goal with the exam is to provide you with the best optometric care while keeping you as comfortable as possible.
A typical annual exam includes:
Personal history
Many eye diseases and conditions are inherited, and other health problems can affect your eyes. It’s important for us to know what’s happening with your health to provide the best care we can.
Visual acuity
When you hear people talk about having 20/20 vision, they are talking about visual acuity. This is the most recognized aspect of the eye exam, the sharpness and clarity of vision at a distance. Myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), presbyopia (“old-age farsightedness” or the loss of focusing ability) and astigmatism represent measurements of visual acuity.
Other measures of eye function
Many of the tests that come at the beginning of your exam measure aspects of your vision like depth perception, color vision, eye muscle movements, peripheral (or side) vision and the way your pupils respond to light.
Keratometry
This is the measurement of the shape or curve of the cornea, which is used to for contact lens fitting, the detection of corneal diseases and determining candidacy for Lasik surgery.
Refraction assessment
The refraction assessment is the measurement of how light rays focus on the back of your eye after passing through your lens and cornea. This measurement helps us determine your vision correction procedure, if you need one. When we put a series of lenses in front of your eyes and ask which are clearer, this is part of the refraction assessment.
Eye focusing and movement
Vision isn’t just about acuity. We also need to test your eyes’ ability to focus and move together. This can impact various aspects of everyday life, such as computer eyestrain for adults and reading deficiency with children.
Eye health
We take a look at various aspects of your eye health, which is an important part of early detection of eye diseases or conditions. The air puff (tonometry) test for risk of glaucoma is one of these. We also examine your cornea, eyelids, conjunctiva and other tissues using bright light and magnification. Read more about retina testing below.
Retinal examination
The retinal examination allows us to see the health of the back of your eye which includes the optical nerve and blood vessels that nourish the retina.
When it comes to the retinal examination, most people think about dilating the pupils. This is one way to get a better look at the retina, but it can be inconvenient. Fortunately, we have technology that helps us get an enhanced view of the retina. The Optos retinal camera and our Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) instrument are particularly effective at the early detection of retinal disease, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.