Eye exams are crucial for the health of eyes
Regular comprehensive eye exams are crucial for both adults and children to maintain eye health. An eye exam can help adults not only formulate and update their eyewear prescription, but also search for any sign of common eye diseases. For children, eye exams are even more important since vision is so closely related to their study. If they have poor vision or image interpretation, they are most likely to have a poor performance in their study. Parents should take children to a related professional doctor for an eye examination as soon as they get a reading or learning difficulty, in order to find out the potential vision root.
Eyewear prescription is just a small portion of an eye exam. Its more significant role is to detect initial signs of eye diseases, preventing them from developing into more severe vision problems. The following two paragraphs is a description of some items for detection.
The first eye condition is refraction error, including myopia, hyperopic and astigmatism, all of which can be corrected using eyewear or refractive surgery. The second item that may be examined is amblyopia, which refers to the uneven development of the two eyes. Once found, amblyopia can be treated by covering the disabled eye, otherwise it will lead to permanent vision loss. A third search may be given to strabismus, which is also known as crossed or turned eyes in brief. People with this disease may have an unperfect eyes alignment, which may affect their depth perception and lead to amblyopia. Properly aligned eyes do not mean healthy eyes. So, the forth item may be teaming problems of the eyes. Signs of uncoordinated eyes (also named binocular vision problems) include headaches and eyestrain. An eye doctor should also pay attention to eye focusing problems during an eye exam. These problems may bother both children (resulted from incomplete focusing skills development) and aged people due natural decline, such as presbyopia.
Another part of examination items is related to more severe eye diseases. Early detection and subsequent treatment of eye diseases are essential to minimize the risk of lifelong vision impairment. Diabetic eye diseases are common and probably cause small blood vessel leaks or bleeding eye and macula swelling. Other eye diseases or health problems include glaucoma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and so on. During eye exams, your doctor may check signs of these diseases using instruments or just by staring at your eye’s blood vessels and retina.
Vision screenings can never get the same effects from complete eye exams. A vision screening may test blur, muscle coordination and common eye diseases. These brief tests can only perform as an indicator for further eye exam, rather than replacing it. A driver’s license renewal just requires such a vision screening. Vision screenings can be conducted simply by school nurses, pediatricians, health care providers and volunteers. In contrast, a complete eye exam including all vision aspects testing must be carried out by an eye doctor, rather than incompetent family physicians and pediatricians. Only professional doctors can ensure all testing items and work out a proper personal treatment plan on the basis of the exam results.
If your doctor can not determine you eye problems, you may need to take a second exam after a period of time. For assured problems, a subsequent treatment plan will be made. Your eye doctor will prescribe different solutions for different eye problems. Corrective eyewear is commonly used for refractive errors. Binocular vision problems always require a vision therapy or strabismus surgery. For vision health maintenance or dry eyes relief, eye vitamins or vision nurture may be the right choice.
