Eye Exam

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Is your vision giving you trouble driving at night? Is your child having difficulty in school? Did your child’s teacher recommend a vision check? Are you having trouble reading small print at near? You (or your child) may need an Eye Examination

What to expect

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If your child is having problems reading or learning at school, his or her teacher will recommend an Exam, especially if your child failed a school vision screening.

What to expect for your child follows:

A thorough Patient History of any medical or visual problems of your child. Your eye doctor will not only ask about vision complaints but also about any discomfort of the eyes such as burning, itching, redness or tearing.

Visual Acuity assessment using an Eye Test Chart

Assessment of your child’s Binocular Vision, or ability to use both eyes together.

Assessment of your child’s eyeglasses prescription with an Eye Refraction Exam.

Assessment of Ocular Health

These aspects of a Children’s Eye Exam are not very different from an Exam done for an adult.

Additional testing that may be included in a Children’s Exam include:

Depth perception testing

Color Blind Test

A Color Blind Test can be done on children or adults in order to identify an inherited Color Deficiency. Some companies require a Color Blind Test for certain job positions that require good color vision like pilots, train conductors and electricians.

A Color Blind Test may also be used to monitor progression of various Eye Diseases such as Diabetic Retinopathy, Glaucoma, and Macular Degeneration.

What to expect depends on the type of eye care provider you visit. Choosing an Eye Doctor for a vision problem can be confusing since there are a number of eye specialists such as Ophthalmologist, Optometrist, and Optician.

In a nutshell, the Optometrist can provide you comprehensive primary care for all of your eye needs. If you are diagnosed with an Eye Disease that falls outside of the scope of practice of the Optometrist, then you will be referred to an eye surgeon, or Ophthalmologist.

Both Optometrists and Ophthalmologists may specialize further to certain areas of eye care such as Vision Training, Low Vision, Retina, Glaucoma, Neuro-Ophthalmology, or Contact Lenses. What to expect from a Contact Lens Eye Exam is first a comprehensive Eye Exam and then a separate Contact Lenses fitting exam.

During the Contact Lenses fitting portion of the exam, your eye doctor will have you insert Contact Lenses as trials and measure your Visual Acuity through them. If the vision is good and the lenses sit well on your Cornea, the prescription can be released.

An Exam may include special tests that can give your eye doctor a better sense of both quantity and quality of vision. Low contrast and High Order Aberrations may wreak havoc on your vision quality even if your eye doctor tells you have 20/20 vision.

Special tests that can shed light on the quality of your vision include:

Contrast Sensitivity Test: can help determine how low contrast situations such as glare, fog, rain, or snow conditions can affect your vision.

Visual Field Test: can help demonstrate if you have had a loss of Peripheral Vision or if you have Tunnel Vision.

Wavefront Technology: can help measure if your eye has High Order Aberrations that give you uncomfortable symptoms of night vision halos and starbursts.

Perhaps you do not have any visual problems and you are healthy. Why do you need an Eye Examination First, there are multiple Eye Problems that may not give you any symptoms but can be vision-threatening and only an Eye Examination can discover them.

Finally, getting a routine Exam periodically is important because it is part of the preventative maintenance you should be doing on yourself just like routine dental and medical exams.

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