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Comprehensive Eye Care

Man Having an Eye Exam

The goal of comprehensive eye care is to keep you seeing well. To maintain good vision and to keep your eyes healthy, it is important to have your eyes examined every one to two years. At your exam your vision will be checked and you will be screened for eye diseases and other vision disorders.

Signs That You May Need an Eye Exam:

  • Arms are suddenly “too short,” i.e., need to hold the newspaper or other reading material far away
  • Unusual difficulty adjusting to dark rooms
  • Difficulty focusing on close or distant objects
  • Unusual sensitivity to light or glare
  • Change in the color of the iris
  • Red-rimmed, encrusted, or swollen lids
  • Recurrent pain in or around the eyes
  • Double vision
  • Dark spot at the center of vision
  • Lines and straight edges appear wavy or distorted
  • Excess tearing or watery eyes
  • Dry eyes with itching or burning
  • Seeing spots or ghost-like images

People with diabetes or a family history of eye disease should have their eyes examined at least once a year. Diabetes in particular can lead to very serious eye complications. Certain professions require eye exams – pilots and military personnel, among others.

Diagnosis of eye disorders is initially based on the symptoms that a person is experiencing, the appearance of the eyes, and the results of an examination. It is important to know that certain eye diseases do not have symptoms. That is why seeing your eye doctor regularly is crucial.


Common Vision Disorders

Myopia (Nearsightedness)

Illustrating How Light Enters the Eye With Myopia

Nearsighted individuals typically have problems seeing well at a distance and are forced to wear glasses or contact lenses. The nearsighted eye is usually longer than a normal eye, and its cornea may also be steeper.

Therefore, when light passes through the cornea and lens, it is focused in front of the retina. This will make distant images appear blurred. There are several refractive surgery solutions available to correct nearly all levels of nearsightedness.

Hyperopia (Farsightedness)

Illustrating How Light Enters the Eye With Hyperopia

Farsighted individuals typically develop problems reading up close before the age of 40. The farsighted eye is usually slightly shorter than a normal eye and may have a flatter cornea. Thus, the light of distant objects focuses behind the retina unless the natural lens can compensate fully.

Near objects require even greater focusing power to be seen clearly and therefore, blur more easily. LASIK, refractive lens exchange and contact lenses are a few of the options available to correct farsightedness.

Astigmatism

Illustrating How Light Enters the Eye With As tigmatism

Asymmetric steepening of the cornea or natural lens causes light to be focused unevenly, which is the main optical problem in astigmatism. To individuals with uncorrected astigmatism, images may look blurry or shadowed.

Astigmatism can accompany any form of refractive error and is very common. Astigmatism can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, corneal relaxing incisions, laser vision correction, and special implant lenses.

Presbyopia

Illustrating How Light Enters the Eye With Presbyopia

Presbyopia is a condition that typically becomes noticeable for most people around age 45. In children and young adults, the lens inside the eye can easily focus on distant and near objects. With age, the lens loses its ability to focus adequately.

Although presbyopia is not completely understood, it is thought that the lens and its supporting structures lose the ability to make the lens longer during close vision effort. To compensate, affected individuals usually find that holding reading material further away makes the image clearer.