Here's What Your Optometrist Is Looking For During Your Eye Exam

If you are one of the 150 million Americans who wear corrective eyewear, you know the importance of an eye exam. If you have vision problems, you likely see an optometrist once a year to check for any updates to your current prescriptions. Even if you are lucky enough to have perfect vision, it’s still necessary to get a checkup every two years with an optometrist.

With four New York locations, Benjamin Optical provides eye care from basic exams and routine visits to the treatment of eye diseases and disorders. Having yearly checkups will help you focus on your best life, literally. 

Why are eye exams important?

Vision impairment isn’t just a loss of eyesight, it negatively impacts your social life, your career, and your mental health. Your quality of life relies on healthy sight, so you can understand how essential eye health is to your well-being. Your vision should be taken care of accordingly. 

Routine eye exams allow our doctors to monitor eye health and offer treatments to preserve or correct your vision. 

What should I expect during an eye exam?

An eye exam is a variety of basic tests to check for general eye health and to evaluate the sharpness of your vision. To do this, our doctors will have you read numbers and letters on an eye chart, and from a projection on the wall in front of you. This is what measures how well you can see things far away and up close. 

Our doctors will then ask you to follow a moving object with your eyes only to test your ocular motility, which really means they are testing the strength of your eye muscles. After that, they’ll need to see inside your eye using a bright light. 

They’ll check you for glaucoma, which is a critical part of the exam because glaucoma affects almost three million Americans who are older than 40. Prevention is key. So, what our doctors do is check the pressure in your eye. They’ll use an instrument called a tonometer to measure the pressure after they’ve used eye drops to numb your eye.

Finally, the doctor will check your retina to get a good view of the back of your eye. This typically means the doctor will shine a very bright light into your eye to check it out. After that, you’ll be all set. The doctor will let you know what your next steps are, based on the results of your eye exam.

What results can I expect?

Depending on your eye health, you could get normal results or results that indicate you may need corrective eyewear. Normal results include:

• Good peripheral vision
• 20/20 vision
• Ability to see many different colors
• Healthy eye structures (internally and externally)
• No noticeable cataracts or glaucoma

If abnormal results are detected, you may need further tests to form a diagnosis and treatment plan.

If you’re ready to meet the friendly and compassionate team at Benjamin Optical, contact us at one of our four New York offices, or use our convenient online scheduling tool to book an eye exam or consultation today.