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 an eye doctor for an eye examination as soon as possible once they get a reading or learning difficulty, in order to find out the exact reason.

Checking items during a comprehensive eye exam

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 that may be detected during an eye checkup. One category is slight visual disorders and the other category is severe eye diseases.

Refractive errors and amblyopia

The first eye condition is refraction errors, including myopia, hyperopic and astigmatism, any 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 strong eye, otherwise the weak eye will probably suffer permanent vision loss.

Strabismus, uncoordinated eyes and low focusing ability

A third search may be given to strabismus, which is also known as crossed or turned eyes in brief. People with this disease have an imperfect eye alignment, which affects their depth perception and quite likely leads 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 development of focusing skills) and aged people due to natural decline, such as presbyopia.

Comprehensive eye exam also detects eye diseases

The other major category of examination items is related to more severe eye diseases. Early detection and subsequent treatment for eye diseases are essential to minimize the risk of developing lifelong vision impairment. Diabetic eye diseases are common and probably cause small blood vessel leakage, bleeding eye or swelling macula. Other eye diseases or health problems include glaucoma, high blood pressure and high cholesterol etc. During a comprehensive eye exam, the doctor will check signs of these diseases using instruments or just by staring at the eye’s blood vessels and retina.

Vision screening differ greatly from complete eye exam

Vision screenings can never yield the same effects as complete eye exams. A vision screening may test visual blurriness, ocular 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 involving all vision aspects 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 plan of personal treatment on the basis of the exam results.

Eye care following a complete eye exam

If the doctor can not determine or diagnose your eye problems, it is necessary to take a second complete exam after a period of time. For assured visual problems, a subsequent treatment plan will be made. Your eye doctor will work out different solutions to specific 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 eye relief, taking eye vitamins or vision nurture is the right choice.