Is It Time for Your Eye Exam?

• Posted on: Nov 15 2018
• By: The Eye Clinic
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Most problems with your eyes can be addressed effectively. But this is only true if Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Donohue, or Dr. Samples can spot the problem early on in its development. That’s the scary thing about many eye problems, such as glaucoma or macular degeneration — they don’t start exhibiting any signs to the person until a degree of vision damage has already occurred. That’s why vision exams every two years or so if you’re over 40 and every year after 50 are necessary.

People wonder what we’re doing when we blow a puff of air onto their eyes or when we switch out all of those lenses and ask you which is better. Well, when you have an eye exam at The Eye Clinic, here is a list of the tests that we perform, along with what each test is trying to do.

• Refraction assessment— As light rays enter the front of your eyes, they are bent as they reach the retina in the back of the eye. If the light rays aren’t focused properly, you have a refractive error. Glasses or contact lenses correct these errors. To fine tune the amount of error and correction we use a phoropter, where alternate lenses are rotated in front of your eyes to find which correction gives you the best vision.
• Visual acuity test— This uses an alphabet eye chart, also called the Snellen chart. You read the letters that get progressively smaller the farther down your read.
• Vision field test— This determines if you have difficulty seeing in any areas of your overall field of vision. We use an automated perimetry machine where you look at a screen with blinking lights on it. You press a button each time you see a blink.
• Eye muscle test— You simply follow an object and we watch your eye movements to check for muscle weakness, poor control, or poor coordination between eyes.
• Color vision test— To test for any color vision problems, we show you several multicolored dot-pattern tests. There are numbers and shapes within the dot patterns. If you can’t see certain colors, you won’t see the numbers/shapes in the dots.
• Slit-lamp examination— The slit lamp is a microscope that illuminates and magnifies the front of your eye. We examine your eyelids, lashes, cornea, iris, lens, and the fluid chamber in your eye.
• Retinal examination— Sometimes called funduscopy or ophthalmoscopy, this is the examination of the back of your eye, where the retina, optic disc, and various blood vessels are found. For this exam, we usually dilate your eye with eyedrops. These keep the pupil from getting smaller when a light is shown on it.
• Glaucoma screening— Glaucoma is a disease where pressure builds inside your eyeball, intraocular pressure. This pressure damages the optic nerve and your vision. For this test, we usually use a puff of air shot onto the front of the eye. This measures the pressure in the eye.

Is it time for your eye exam? Call us at The Eye Clinic, (503) 297-4718, to make your appointment.

Posted in: Eye Exam