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General Eyecare

What is General Eye Care?

Your eyes are one of the most vital organs in your body. But they are also one of the most susceptible to injury and disease. They allow you to experience and observe the world around you visually. They’re also soft, exposed, and under-protected. Outside forces or internal diseases and conditions can easily damage your eyes. And when your eyes get hurt, there is a chance the damage could be permanent. There are many ways to maintain eye health, but you have to make some effort to keep them healthy. The best way to ensure your eyes remain healthy and functional is with regular eye exams.

General eye care is the best way to guarantee you keep your eyesight no matter what happens to your eyes. Your eye doctor can use glasses, contacts, medical procedures, or other treatments to protect your vision. General eye care is necessary to know what is happening to your eyes. This knowledge can then inform and influence treatments. The eye doctors at Zion Eye Center can treat any eye condition as long as they know what is wrong with your vision. The only way to find out is with consistent general eye care.

Eye Exams

Routine eye exams are a collection of tests, observations, and questions given to you by an eye doctor. They explore the health of your eyes and if you are having difficulty with anything vision-related.

Routine eye exams check for common refractive errors and visual disturbances. They ensure your vision is stable, functional and helps you go about your day.

Routine eye exams use many of the same tests that a medical eye exam uses. The difference is in what you discuss with your eye doctor.

Routine eye exams focus on your visual abilities and if you experience any refractive interference. Medical eye exams deal more with specific conditions and how they may affect your eyes.

Some of the tests used during a routine eye exam include:

• Eye muscle test
• Visual acuity test
• Refraction assessment
• Visual field test
• Color vision testing
• Slit-lamp examination
• Retinal exam
• Glaucoma screening

During a routine eye exam, your eye doctor wants to test the muscles in your eyes. They examine your eye’s ability to focus on objects near, far away, in-between, in your periphery, and more.

They check every eye function to ensure your eyes can handle everything they’re supposed to. If they lack particular abilities, your eye doctor may test for underlying causes.

You could get diagnosed with a visual or medical condition during a routine eye exam. In that case, you’ll discuss your options to maintain base eye health.

Without routine eye exams, issues can develop in your eyes without you being aware of them. If this happens for too long, you can lose your eyesight for good.

The best way to ensure you don’t lose your vision is to have an eye exam at least once a year. That way, your eye doctor can track your eye health as you get older and ensure you don’t have deeper eye issues.

Also, a routine eye exam informs your eye doctor about changes that are happening to your sight. Certain conditions, like presbyopia, develop as you age but are still relatively young. Your eye doctor will know if age-related farsightedness is affecting you based on the results of your eye exam.

Medical Eye Exams

During a medical eye exam, you undergo much of the same process as a routine eye exam. The difference between the two is if you have or get diagnosed with any underlying conditions.

If you have a medical condition or disease that could affect your eyes, you will have extra tests to undergo. These tests will address the progression and impact on your eyes of your medical condition.

Medical eye exams also check your general eye health. But they mainly focus on your medical condition and how that affects your eyesight.

Medical conditions that affect your eyes can cause rapid damage. Your eye doctor needs to ensure that your eyesight is not at risk due to a medical condition.

Common conditions your eye doctor may look for during a medical eye exam are the presence of:

• Cataracts
• Glaucoma
• Retina disorders and conditions

More diseases can affect your eyesight, but these are the most likely culprits. Refractive errors are not considered medical conditions.

Refractions

Refractions are some of the most common and well-known eye exams. A refraction exam is when you sit in a chair and look at a chart, usually twenty feet away.

The chart is the same type of chart used in a visual acuity exam. It has letters of different sizes on each row that get smaller the farther down the chart you go.

You read the chart with one eye covered during a visual acuity exam, standing twenty feet away. In a refraction exam, your eye doctor puts different strength lenses in front of each of your eyes separately.

The piece of equipment they use to do this is a phoropter. It helps your eye doctor determine the prescription your eyes need to see clearly.

As they put the different lenses in front of each of your eyes, you tell them whether the chart is blurry or clear. Based on what you relay to your eye doctor, they determine the prescription your eyes need. Refractions also help your eye doctor diagnose nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.

Regular eye exams are your best defense against vision loss from disease, aging, and refractive errors. By regularly seeing your eye doctor, they can track the health of your eyes and see when problems arise.

Without regular exams, you have no idea if eye diseases or conditions are developing. Even worse, your eye doctor has no idea if something is developing that could impact your vision in the future.

Without that knowledge, they can’t do anything to save your sight. Tracking the health of your eyes over time allows them to treat issues promptly to preserve your vision if the need arises.

If it’s time for you to have an eye exam, schedule an appointment at Zion Eye Institute in Santa Clara, CA. Don’t risk your eyesight by not seeing your eye doctor. Ensure lifelong vision with regular eye exams!