Periodic Eye Examinations

Periodic Eye Examinations

Periodic eye examinations includes a series of tests to evaluate your vision and check for eye diseases. Your eye doctor will likely use a variety of instruments, shine bright lights in your eyes, ask you to look through a set of lenses. Each test during an eye exam evaluates a different aspect of your vision or eye health.

Why you should have regular eye exams?

Periodic eye examinations helps detect eye problems at earliest stage when they are most treatable. Regular eye exams give your eye care professional a chance to help you correct or adapt to vision changes. Also it will provide you with tips on caring for your eyes. And an eye exam can provide clues to your overall health.

When should an eye exam be done?

Several factors can determine how often you need periodic eye examinations, including your age, health, and risk of developing eye problems.

General guidelines are as follows:

Adults

In general, if you are healthy and have no signs of vision problems. We recommend having a full eye exam at age 40, when some vision changes and eye diseases are likely to begin. Based on the results of your scan, your eye doctor can recommend how often you should have periodic eye examinations in the future.

If you’re 60 or older, have your eyes checked once or twice a year.

Get your periodic eye examinations more often if:

• Those who use glasses or contact lenses.
• If you have a family history of eye disease or vision loss.
• If you have a chronic disease that puts you at greater risk of eye disease, such as diabetes.
• If you are taking medicines that affect the eyes and have side effects.
• Do you have eye problem now?
• Have you had eye problems in the past?
• Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? If so, are you satisfied with them?
• What health problems have you experienced in recent years?
• What medications do you take?
• Are you allergic to drugs, food or other substances?
• Have you had eye surgery?
• Does anyone in your family have eye problems such as macular degeneration, glaucoma or retinal detachment?
• Do you or your family have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or other health problems that can affect the whole body?

We recommend that you prepare the answers to these questions for yourself before your eye examination.

Children aged 3 and under

Your child’s pediatrician will likely check your child’s eyes for healthy eye development.  And look for the most common childhood eye problems – lazy eye, strabismus or misalign eyes. Between the ages of 3 and 5, a more comprehensive eye exam will look for problems with vision and eye alignment. Especially lazy eye is a disease seen in children and must be diagnose and treated until the age of 7 years. Unfortunately, there is no cure for amblyopia. Which is diagnose at an advanced age, and it usually leads to lifelong permanent vision loss in a lazy eye in children. Therefore, do not neglect to have your children undergo periodic eye examinations every year from the age of 2 to 7 years old.

School-age children and adolescents

Especially, have your child’s vision check before they start kindergarten. Your child’s doctor can recommend how periodic eye examinations should be done after that.

During the Eye Examination

A clinical assistant or biomedical technician may do some of the work. Such as taking your medical history and doing your eye tests.

An eye exam usually includes these steps:

• Measuring your visual acuity to see if you need glasses or contact lenses to improve your vision.
• Your eye pressure will be measure with a non-contact tonometry device.
• Your ophthalmologist may give you eye drops that dilate your pupil so that you can see inside your eye more easily.
• Your doctor may perform several tests to check your vision and the appearance and function of all parts of your eyes.

After inspection

Especially, at the end of your eye exam, you and your doctor will discuss the results of all the tests. Also including evaluation of your vision, your risk of eye disease, and preventive measures you can take to protect your eyesight.

Eye muscle test. This test evaluates the muscles that control eye movement. Your eye doctor watches as your eyes follow a moving object, such as a pencil or small light. Looks for muscle weakness, poor control or poor coordination.

Visual acuity test

Particularly, this test measures how clearly you see. Your doctor will ask you to identify different letters of the alphabet printed on a chart or a screen placed some distance away. The lines of text get smaller as you move down the chart.

Usually, each eye is tested individually. Aşso, your nearsightedness can also be tested using a card with letters kept at reading distance.

Fracture assessment

Especially, light waves bend as they pass through your cornea and lens. If the light rays do not focus completely behind your eye, you have a refractive error. Therefore, this may mean that you need some type of correction, such as glasses, contact lenses, or refractive surgery, to see as clearly as possible.

Evaluation of your refractive error helps your doctor determine a lens prescription that will provide you with the sharpest, most comfortable vision. Also, the assessment may determine that you do not need corrective lenses.

Your doctor uses a computerized refractor to measure your eyeglass or contact lens prescription and measures your refractive error.

Usually, your ophthalmologist will fine-tune this refraction assessment by having you look through a mask-like device with wheels through different lenses (phoropter). Therefore, your doctor asks you to decide which lens combination gives you the sharpest vision.

Bio-Microscopic examination

It is an eye microscope that magnifies and illuminates the front of your eye with an intense line of light through a microscope. Therefore, your doctor uses this device to examine the eyelids, eyelashes, cornea, iris, lens, and the fluid chamber between the cornea and iris.

Your doctor may use a dye, most commonly fluorescein, to color the tear film on your eye.  Also, this helps reveal damaged cells before your eyes. Your tears wash the dye off the surface of your eyes pretty quickly.

Retinal examination

Sometimes called an ophthalmoscopy or funduscopy, this exam allows your doctor to evaluate the back of the eye. Also includes the retina, optic disc, and retinal blood vessels that feed the retina. Especially, enlarging your pupils with eye drops before the examination prevents your pupils from constricting when your doctor shines light on your eyes.

After giving eye drops, your eye doctor may use one or more of the following techniques to see behind your eye:

Direct inspection. Your eye doctor uses an ophthalmoscope to send a beam of light to your pupil to see the back of the eye. Sometimes eye drops are not necessary to enlarge your eyes before this examination.

Indirect exam. During this exam, you can sit in the exam chair or sit back. Your ophthalmologist examines the inside of the eye with the help of a condensing lens and a bright light mounted on the forehead. Therefore, this examination allows your doctor to see the retina and other structures inside your eye in great detail and in three dimensions.

Glaucoma screening

With Non-Contact Tonometry, the fluid pressure inside your eye is measured (intraocular blood pressure). Particularly, this is a test that helps your eye doctor detect glaucoma, a disease that damages the optic nerve.

Also, various methods are available for measuring intraocular pressure, including:

Non-Contact Tonometry (Non-Contact). Especially, this method uses a blast of air to estimate the pressure in your eye. No instruments touch your eyes, so you don’t need anesthesia. You will feel a momentary pulse of air in your eye, which can be frightening.

Moreover, if your eye pressure is above average or your optic nerve looks unusual, your doctor may use a pachymeter that uses sound waves to measure the thickness of your cornea. The most common way to measure corneal thickness is to put a drop of anesthetic into your eye and then gently touch with a small probe into contact with the anterior surface of the eye (cornea). The measurement takes seconds.

Depending on your age, medical history, and risk of developing eye disease, you may need more specific testing.

Inspection Results

Results of an eye exam include:

• Whether you need vision correction with glasses, contact lenses or surgery.
• Whether your eyes are healthy or if you have retinal disorders such as cataracts, glaucoma or macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy.
• If you need corrective lenses, your doctor will give you a prescription.

Especially, if your eye exam reveals other abnormal results. Your doctor will discuss with you the next steps for further testing or treating an underlying condition.

Useful Links

Strabismus Crossed Eye Squint Treatments, Diabetic Retinopathy Disease. Macular Degeneration Treatments. Glaucoma Disease and Treatments. Retinitis Pigmentosa Disease and Treatments. Dry Eye Syndrome Treatments. Comprehensive eye exams (AOA Advisory).