The Consulting Room
The optician will ask about your
own and your family's medical history. Several eye conditions
are hereditary and many others are related to health,
so it is important to take these factors into account.
Pre-Examination Checks
Your optical adviser may carry
out any preliminary checks that are required, prior
to your eye examination. These can include testing your
eye pressure (to detect glaucoma - which, if undetected,
could lead to blindness), checking sideways field of
vision and colour vision.
All these checks are quick and painless, and will provide
us with important information that will help monitor
any slight changes over time.
Retinoscope
Your optician will look at your
eyes through a small hand-held instrument that shines
a light into your eyes. The light bounces off the back
of your eye and by focusing the beam it's possible to
get an accurate measurement of your prescription.
Your Opinion
These are tests where you say
what you see. You look through an instrument at various
images projected onto the opposite wall while your optometrist
flips different lenses in front of your eyes. These
tests determine the best prescription to give you balanced
vision.
How You Focus
As you get older the lens in
your eye becomes less flexible, making it difficult
to focus close up, so your optometrist may test your
ability to focus at varying distances.
In one such test the optician asks you to focus on a
sliding target while it is moved towards you until it
becomes blurred.
Eye Movement and Focus
To check that your eyes move
and focus properly, your optician will move a pen around
in front of your eyes and towards your nose.
You may also be invited to take a colour blindness test.
Because this is normally a stable and hereditary condition,
you will only take this test once, at your first visit.
A small torch will also be flashed in your eyes to determine
how well your pupils react. This helps reveal any possible
neurological problems.
Inside Your Eye
Your optician shines a bright
light into your eye and examines the health of the back
of the eye and to check the clarity of the lens.
During this part of the examination, any early indications
of high blood pressure, glaucoma or cataract can be
picked up.
Glaucoma and Peripheral Vision
Your optician may want to test
for glaucoma by testing for loss of vision at the side,
in the middle or in patches.
This is done using a visual field screener, which flashes
dots of light against a black background and you say
how many dots you see and where. If you fail to see
some dots, you may have a blind spot.
Eye Pressure
A machine blows a puff of air
into your eyes to measure their internal pressure.
This is an important test that can indicate the early
stages of glaucoma.
Outside Your Eye
A slit lamp - a powerful, illuminated
microscope - is used to check the outside of your eye
for abnormalities or scratches.
The Prescription
After you have completed all
the tests, your optician will give you your prescription
and explain the recommendations; if you require spectacles
our Dispensing Assistant will help you to choose a
style to match your looks and budget.
