Eye Exam

Our eye exam tests more than 20/20 eyesight. The Snellen fractions (20/20, 20/100, etc.) are measures of sharpness or clarity of sight (visual acuity). 20/20 just means that at a distance of twenty feet a person can see clearly a certain size of letter on the eye chart. There’s more to healthy vision than 20/20 vision!

Our eye exam goes beyond 20/20 to evaluate the structures of the eye for signs of trauma or the many eye diseases that can affect the eye.

Eye diseases can range from the chronic to vision threatening. They include dry eye, conjunctivitis, iritis, cataract, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and glaucoma, to mention just a few. General conditions such as thyroid, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and multiple sclerosis are some of the many systemic diseases that can be detected during the eye exam.

Our eye exam also investigates important visual skills that are important for efficiency, comfort and performance:

Visual Acuity at near: Is vision clear and single for tasks at close distances? Clear sight at short distances is critical for tasks such as reading, writing, computer use, etc.

Binocularity: Do the eyes aim, move, and work as a coordinated team? Weaknesses in these eye teaming skills cause numerous difficulties including convergence insufficiency, poor depth perception, head aches, and double vision to mention a few.

Eye Focusing Skills: Do the eyes maintain clear vision at varying distances? Rapid, automatic focus adjustment is critical for learning, reading, writing, sports, etc. Deficiencies can cause visual fatigue, poor reading comprehension, and/or avoidance of close work or other activities.

Eye Movement Skills: Do eye movements show adequate muscle control, tracking, and fixation? In the classroom normal eye movements allow for rapid and accurate shifting of the eyes along a line of print, or from the chalkboard to the book. In sports, efficient eye movements contribute to eye-hand coordination, visual reaction, and accurate tracking.

Colour Vision: Does the person discriminate colours? Males are especially susceptible to colour blindness. It is important in careers such as police, fire, printing, and pilot. Some eye diseases can affect colour vision such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, and multiple sclerosis. Head trauma can also affect colour vision.

Peripheral Vision: Is there adequate vision to see what is around and beside us? Peripheral vision is important to "see" ahead a few words while reading, helps us avoid re-reading and skipping lines, prevents tripping over curbs and bumping into walls, gives us a better awareness of where we are in space, gives us good grounding to avoid car sickness, to mention just a few things that affect our effectiveness and safety.

Perceived Mid-line: How accurate is our awareness of where we are relative to things in our environment? Is our perceived mid-line shifted up, down, left, or right? It is important that our visual perception of how we centre ourselves, matches with our other senses of where we are in space. A mismatch can cause difficulties in reading, walking, driving, and other activities of daily living, working, and school.

Glare Recovery: Can the eye adapt to bright light? Can we see in dark areas? Good glare recovery is necessary to see indoors after one has been the sun, to see the road in the presence of oncoming headlights, to maintain comfort and efficiency while on the computer.