Even a Cyclops Would Love Our Eye Exams

• Posted on: Apr 15 2020
• By: The Eye Clinic
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If we had to pick a favorite monster here at The Eye Clinic, we’d probably have to go with the Cyclops. After all, a monster built around his eyes, or in this case, eye, can’t be all that bad, right?

With just a single eye, having regular eye exams would be of paramount importance to a Cyclops. But just because you have two eyes, what’s your excuse for not coming to our beautiful offices on Barnes Road to have your eyes checked regularly?

A comprehensive eye exam involves a series of tests to evaluate your vision and check for eye diseases. Dr. Wilkins and Dr. Donohue will use a variety of instruments, have you look through a variety of changing lenses, shine bright lights at your eyes, and even hit your eyeball with a puff of wind. The goal of each of these tests is to evaluate a different aspect of your vision quality or the health of your eyes.

The key is to not only check your eyes for their degree of refractive error but to also catch any eye problems as early as possible. This is because many eye conditions and diseases don’t exhibit symptoms until they have already caused vision damage.

Here are the things we test in your comprehensive eye exam at The Eye Clinic.

• 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.

• 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.

• Eye muscle test — You simply follow an object and Dr. Wilkins or Dr. Donohue watch your eye movements to check for muscle weakness, poor control, or poor coordination between eyes.

• 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 light.

• 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 may dilate your eyes 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.

In our May blog, we’ll cover other issues with your eye exams such as when children should be coming to see us for the first time. Check back for that.

Is it time for your regular exam? Call us at (503) 297-4718 to schedule your appointment.

Posted in: Eye Exam