An important part of preventative health care is routine eye health examinations. These exams are an essential part of keeping your vision healthy now and in the future. Eye and vision conditions will often have no obvious symptoms in their early stages. This places unknowing individuals at risk for more damaging problems that could have been treated if they had been diagnosed earlier. A critical part of maintaining good vision is the early diagnosis and treatment to prevent vision loss. To protect and preserve your precious sense of sight, be sure to have regular eye health examinations. The frequency of these regular eye exams depends on several different factors such as:
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Medical History
- Family History
- Social History
- Occupation
- Other Factors
Eye Exams for Adults & Seniors
If you are in overall good health, and to the best of your knowledge you have not been diagnosed with any eye health problems or eye diseases, scheduling an eye examination every two years is usually sufficient. It is important that, if you have any family member who has been told that they have glaucoma, macular degeneration (AMD) or you are diabetic you will need to be examined at least each year or as directed by your eye doctor or family doctor. A number of eye problems and eye conditions become more frequent with age. In particular, cataract formation and other age related macula problems increase in frequency for patients over 55-60 years of age and even healthy people should consider scheduling a routine eye exam each year if they fall into this age group. Anyone over 40 should have an eye exam and glaucoma testing each year and anyone over 50 with a family history of macular degeneration should also be examined annually.
Eye Exams for Children
At about 6 weeks of age, a baby should be able to fixate on an object, such as a face and maintain eye contact. Over a child’s first few years, vision develops rapidly with 20/20 vision often recorded by 2 or 3 years of age with some techniques. Parents should be aware of signs of poor vision in children. If one eye “turns” or “crosses,” that eye may not see as well as the other eye and may be an indication of a vision or developmental problem. If a child is not interested in faces or age-appropriate toys, or if their eyes rove around or jiggle-called nystagmus-you should suspect poor vision. Other signs to watch for are tilting the head and squinting. Babies and toddlers compensate for poor vision rather than complain about it. Should a baby need eyeglasses, the prescription can be determined fairly accurately by dilating the pupil and analyzing the light reflected through the pupil from the back of the eye. Children should have a pediatric eye exam before they enter school in order to diagnose problems with eye health, muscle coordination, focusing and any other vision problems that might impact learning. Depending on your child’s individual history and your family history, an appropriate frequency for children’s eye exams can be determined. Please feel free to ask about how often we might recommend a children’s eye exam for your child.