When you come see us for an eye exam, our opthalmic assistant will ask you some questions regarding your health history and medications you take. You will also be asked about family history of medical problems and eye disease. You will then be taken into a room to have some pretesting or measurements of your eyes and measurements of any current eyeglasses that you have.
This test checks your peripheral vision and may be followed up with a more sophisticated test called a visual field test where your peripheral vision is checked in more detail if needed.
This is the part most patients find tough. “Which is clearer 1 or 2?” Don’t worry! This test is tough for everyone, but we will make it much easier now with our new automated vision tester which allows you to compare choices side by side to improve accuracy and directly feeds into the electronic medical record to eliminate error.
An eye drop is inserted before doing this test, allowing the doctor to check the pressure inside the eyes. You will see a blue light and a probe will put a gentle pressure on the front of the eye but you will not feel this. This only takes a few seconds.
This is the part that more directly checks the health of the eyes. Using a slit lamp which is really just a large microscope to view inside the eyes to check for disease. Using a lens combined with the slit lamp, different parts of the eye can be viewed in great detail. The doctor may put a drop in to open up or dilate the pupils to get a better view inside if needed, to check the retina or back of the eye in more detail. The doctor will often use a binocular indirect ophthalmoscope to view the peripheral areas in the back of the eye in more detail after the eyes are dilated.