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What is General Eye Examination?
General eye examination is a chain of assessments that are typically carried out through an ophthalmologist (eye health practitioner), or different specialists together with optometrists to get your eyes checked. There are different types of general eye examination to assess different parts of people’s vision, and it is recommended that all people should have periodic general eye examinations to take a look at eye health and detect any potential abnormality or disorder.
When to Have a General Eye Examination?
If your eyes are healthy and vision is good, you should have a complete general eye examination by your ophthalmologist once in your 20s and twice in your 30s. The American Academy of Ophthalmology advices that adult individuals get checked by general eye examination at age 40. This is when early symptoms of disease or changes in eye vision may see. It is important to determine eye diseases prematurely. Early treatment can help you to protect your vision.
Children 3 years and younger
Children should have a general eye examination as early as 6 months, before they start school, and then every 1-2 years.
School-age children and adolescents
Every school-age child and teenager must have their general eye examinations every 1-2 years.
Adults
If your eyes are healthy and vision is good, you should have a general eye examination by your ophthalmologist once in your 20s and twice in your 30s.
How You Prepare for General Eye Examination?
Bring Your I.D. and Insurance Card to Your Appointment
- Keep a Log of Your Symptoms
- Take Note of Your Current Medications
- Ask Their Eye Health History of Your Family
- Prepare a Question List for Your Specialist
- Create a Frame Wishlist.
Optometrists
Optometrists examine, diagnose, and treat patients’ eyes
Optometrists
Opticians are technicians who perform fitting of eyeglasses, contact lenses, and other vision-correcting devices that most suitable for patient’s eye disease.
Ophthalmologists
Ophthalmologists are eye specialists who apply both medical and surgical treatments for patient’s eye conditions.
What You Can Expect
Before The Exam
The first step in performing a general eye examination is taking a thorough medical history. This will contains asking questions concerning your eye condition or the reason you were consulted to the eye doctor. Frequent concerns that patients present to the eye doctor contain vision loss or a red eyedness.
During The Exam
Various tests may carry on through general eye examination. The assessments are purposed to check your eyesight and to examine the appearance and function of all regions of your eye. Throughout this complete general eye examination, your eye specialist examines your eyes closely and does bunch of tests. With using eye drops into your eye to dilating the pupils for get a clear look. Some of the tests check your visual ability and decide that if you have a need for glasses or contacts.
After The Exam
At the end of your general eye examination, you and your doctor will discuss the results of all testing, including an assessment of your vision, your risk of eye disease and cautionary measures you can take to protect your eye. A comprehensive general eye examination is more than just a simple eye chart vision test.
If your eyes had dilated during the tests, you will have blurred vision for a few hours after the general eye examination. Your eyes can also be extra touchy to light. At this time period, you should get away from driving, reading and looking at computer or TV screens especially closely. Ensure that you use sunglasses to protect your eyesight from the sun to your pupils shrink back to its natural condition.
Different Types of Eye Exams
Following general eye examinations can be applied for your eyes to diagnose your disease;
Eye Muscle Test
Target of the eye muscle function assessment is to detect any weakness, or other deficiency in the extraocular muscles of the eye that responsible for uncontrolled eye movements. This assessment includes the procedure of moving the eyes in eight different directions to assess the natural functions of the extraocular muscles of the eyes.
Visual Acuity Test
Visual acuity test comprises of the procedure that your eye doctor asks you to read some letters when you see on an eye chart from certain distance. While you read with one eye you need to cover the other one. Also, the eye doctor may want you to do same procedure when you looking through a device named as phoropter, which has various corrective lenses inside of it and to targeted you to see better. This process also called as refraction, it helps your eye doctor to determine which glasses or right corrective lenses you need to use.
Refraction Assessment
Eye doctors make use of an autorefractor to test visual acuity in school-aged children and individuals who have communication issues. An autorefractor, measures your eye’s response with shining a light into the eye. Automatic refraction allows eye doctors to decide right lens prescription for their patient.
Visual Field Test (Perimetry)
Visual field testing used for making the blind spots detection (called scotoma) in the vision and detect the place where they really are. A scotoma’s size and shape can manifest us to understand how eye disease or a brain disorder is affecting your eye and vision.
- Confrontation exam: A frequent way for your eye specialist to screen for any problems in your visual field is with a confrontation exam. Eye specialist may ask you to look straight at an object in front of you while one of the eyes is closed, it can be the eye doctor’s nose in these conditions. Your eye doctor may show his or her fingers in your peripheral vision field areas and asks ‘’how many you see with you looking at my fingers?’’.
- Manual testing, containing tangent screening and Goldmann examinations: Goldmann perimetry test is a kind of kinetic perimetry that a stimulus is moved from beyond the visual field to the field. The area at which the stimulus is initially sighted tracks the outer perimeter of the visual field for the size of the stimulus tested.
- Tangent screen is a large square of black cloth with a central mark for fixation; used with a campimeter in mapping the field of vision.
- Automated perimetry: To test for a suspected eye problem or display the development of an eye disease, your eye doctor will count on more specific evaluations to comprehend how is your ability to see objects in your vision field area. Implementation of the automated static perimetry test is aimed this. It helps generates a detailed map of places that you can and can’t see.
Color Vision Testing
In color vision testing the purpose is to check your color blindness. Your eye doctor will give you a several images with different colored dots. In between these colored dots there are numbers in different colors. Individuals with a color deficiency may not be can see these numbers.
Slit-Lamp Examination
After your eye doctor dilating your pupils with using eye drops, he or she examines your eyes using a microscope called slit lamp that stabilized to a table. In this test you need to put your chin and forehead to the test device. Eye specialist examines your eyes via the slit lamp. This type of general eye examination provides your eye doctor to evaluate the portions of your eyes under high magnification with a clearer view.
Retinal Examination
A retinal general eye examination lets your ophthalmologist look at the structures found at the back of the eye. For this your pupils need to dilated. The eye specialist will beam a light and look at your eyes to evaluate your optic nerve, retina, and blood vessels for diseases such as diabetic retinopathy.
- Direct exam: The eye doctor utilizes an ophthalmoscope to sends a pulse of light into your pupil for able to see the back of your eye. Occasionally, eyedrops aren’t the only choice to dilate your eyes, with the light you can do the assessment as well.
- Indirect exam: In indirect general eye examination, you need to sit up or be reclined in the general eye examination chair. Your eye specialist examines your eye with using condensing lens and utilizing bright light that he or she wears on their forehead.
- Indirect general eye examination gives a chance to the eye doctor to examine the retina and rest of the interior eye structures detailed and in all three dimensions.
Screening for Glaucoma
The general eye examination for screening glaucoma should consist following assessments; visual acuity assessment, pupil general eye examination, anterior segment general eye examination, IOP measurement (especially applanation tonometry gives crucial information), optic nerve general eye examination, and fundus general eye examination.
Several tonometry methods to measure intraocular pressure are available, including:
- Applanation tonometry:This test measures fluid pressure in your eye. The test is done with a slit lamp, which has forehead and chin rests and a tiny cone with a flat tip that gently contacts your cornea. The test measures the force that needed to flatten a part of your cornea transiently.
- Noncontact tonometry:Noncontact (or air-puff) tonometry is a test that performed without touching your eyes however it uses a puff of air to flatten your cornea to assess the pressure of your eye.
Results
At your appointment, in addition to visual acuity and many other factors that affect the quality of your vision, eye diseases and general eye health will be assessed. Poor eye health and eye diseases can indicate problems in your overall health, which is why it’s important to see your eye doctor regularly.
You can call or visit the website of our clinics to get more information about your general eye examination.