Your eyesight is a precious gift, and protecting against vision loss is essential to maintaining your quality of life. By taking the simple step of making a comprehensive eye examination part of your healthcare routine, you can help safeguard your vision.
As part of a comprehensive eye examination, the office of Eye Associates of New York will assess your eye health and every aspect of your vision. We’ll screen for eye diseases that can lead to vision loss, as well as check for any other problems that may affect eye health. Since your eyes can be an indicator of your overall health, we’ll also look for any warning signs of underlying medical conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.
By scheduling an appointment with the office of Eye Associates of New York for routine exams and care, we can help you and every member of the family enjoy optimal vision while protecting the health of their eyes.
A comprehensive eye exam provides an in-depth look at the health of your eyes and a thorough assessment of the quality of your vision.
We begin by reviewing your overall medical history and gathering relevant information on your eye health history and that of your family. We’ll also discuss any symptoms you may be experiencing, along with any work-related or environmental conditions that may affect your vision. You’ll then receive a thorough clinical examination to check the health of your eyes and assess the quality of your vision.
You’ll also be carefully screened for the development of eye diseases that can lead to vision loss. Many eye diseases, including glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, as well as other conditions affecting the retina, demonstrate few if any overt signs or symptoms until irreparable damage to your eyesight has occurred. Detecting diseases that can threaten your sight in their earliest stages supports effective management and care.
As surprising as it sounds, your eyes are the only part of the body where blood vessels and nerve tissue can be viewed directly without surgery. For this very reason, a comprehensive eye exam can potentially reveal telltale signs of illnesses and medical conditions that have originated elsewhere in the body. Eye exams can provide critical findings in the diagnosis of congenital syndromes & inherited disorders, primary cancers and metastases, cardiovascular disease, circulatory problems, blood disorders, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases, endocrine disorders, or the side effects of certain drugs.
Approximately 80% of the information from our environment is gathered and sent for processing by way of our eyes. Healthy vision not only supports the enjoyment of our surroundings, but it also enables us to carry out our daily routines. Comprehensive eye exams performed on a routine basis, or more frequently as recommended, enable the timely correction of vision impairments along with the early detection, management, and treatment of any emerging eye problems.
A comprehensive eye exam involves a series of comfortable and pain-free tests that offer a close-up look at your eye health and visual function. Between having all the tests performed and discussing the results with our eye doctor, you can expect your visit to last up to an hour.
While every patient is different, many of the following tests are typically performed during a comprehensive eye exam:
Visual acuity testing – Measures the sharpness of your vision and how each eye compares to the optimal standard of 20/20 vision
Color blindness testing – Helps to detect hereditary color vision deficiencies or eye health problems that may affect your color vision
Stereoptsis testing – Evaluates how well your eyes work as a team with regard to depth perception and 3D vision.
Eye muscle testing – Checks for eye muscle weakness, poor control, or impaired coordination as your eyes follow a moving object
Pupil testing – Checks how your pupils respond to light
Retinoscopy – Uses reflected light to estimate the lens power needed to correct your vision
Keratometry – Measures the shape and curvature of the cornea
Slit-lamp examination – Examines the structure at the front of your eyes along with those farther back within the eye under high magnification
Peripheral Visual Field – Evaluates the integrity of your peripheral vision and checks for blind spots
Intraocular Pressure Measurement – Checks for the presence of glaucoma
Pupil dilation – Dilating the eyes allows for a better view of the back of the eye and its internal structures. It provides a clearer look at the retina, small blood vessels, and the optic nerve. A dilated eye exam offers an opportunity to check for eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This type of exam is essential for individuals at risk for eye disease.
Please note: dilating eye drops take about 20 minutes to work, and your eyes may be sensitive to light for a few hours following your exam. It’s wise to bring sunglasses to your visit or have someone drive you home from the exam.
Although the above tests provide a detailed view of eye health and function, additional evaluation and testing are sometimes indicated. Further testing may include fundus photos, optical coherence tomography, fluorescein angiography, corneal topography, automated visual field, and others. Today, advanced retinal imaging devices can capture high resolution, wide-angle views of the retina, and save these images for comparisons over time.
At the office of Eye Associates of New York, you can rest assured that your vision care is in the best of hands. We maintain a position at the forefront of advances in technology and treatment to provide patients with the highest quality of care.
As everyone knows, the health of your eyes is essential to your overall function and quality of life. Yet despite the desire to ward off the effects of aging, much like everything else in the body, your eyes and vision are not immune to the changes that come with time. At the office of Eye Associates of New York, we do our utmost to help you protect the health of your eyes and preserve the quality of your vision throughout every stage of life.
While the need for reading glasses in middle age is typically part and parcel of the aging process, there may be other emerging vision changes that are indicative of more serious eye conditions. With advancing age, your risk of eye disease significantly increases. In addition to glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and cataracts, the incidence of problems such as dry eye, floaters, and retinal detachment also occur with greater frequency in older adults. As a matter of fact, by the age of 65, one in three seniors are affected by an eye condition that results in vision impairment.
Since many eye diseases develop without discomfort, routine eye care is essential. For this reason, a baseline eye exam is recommended at the age of 40. By performing an examination at this time, our office can detect eye disease and vision problems early in their onset, when treatment and management to preserve your eyesight are most effective. And, while annual eye exams are essential for older adults, if you are under the age of 40 and have a family history of either glaucoma or macular degeneration or suffer from systemic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure, it’s also important to get your eyes routinely checked.
