The Importance of Vision Care Exams

Vision care exams are crucial to maintaining your vision health. But did you know that eye exams are important for reasons beyond assessing your sight? Let’s take a deeper look into what your doctor can uncover during an exam:

Visual Acuity

As most know, during a regular eye exam your eye care provider assesses your visual acuity, which measures how clearly each eye is seeing. Some of the most common refractive errors include: 

• Myopia (also known as nearsightedness): a condition in which objects up-close appear clearly, but objects in the distance appear blurry.
• Hyperopia (also known as farsightedness): a condition in which objects up-close appear blurry, whereas objects in the distance appear clearly.
• Astigmatism: a condition in which light does not focus light evenly onto the retina, causing objects to appear blurry.

Eye Diseases

Early detection and treatment of eye diseases can be key to preserving your vision. Common eye diseases such as cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration don’t always have symptoms in the early stages. During your vision care exam, your eye care provider may be able to notice signs of trouble and step in to help.

Systemic Diseases

You’ve likely heard that eyes are the window to the soul. But our eyes are truly a window to our overall health. During an eye exam, your eye care provider can detect signs of systemic diseases such as:

• Diabetes
  • Diabetes affects the small capillaries in the retina, causing them to leak blood or yellow fluid.
• Hypertension
  • Hypertension (high blood pressure) can be diagnosed during an exam if blood vessels in the eye show signs of bends, kinks or tears.
• High cholesterol
  • The cornea may appear to have a yellow tint or yellow ring around it if you have high cholesterol.

As you can see, there are many reasons to schedule regular eye exams, even if you aren’t having trouble or experiencing a change in your vision. Contact your eye care provider if you have questions regarding your exam.