What is Comprehensive Eye Care?
For sighted people, proper eye health is far more removed from their everyday healthcare decisions and thoughts, compared to things like dental checkups or even hearing exams. However, as a critical part of your experience of life, your eyes deserve the same care and regular attention as any other part of your body. This is where comprehensive eye care can benefit people in ways they aren’t even aware of. Let’s find out what comprehensive eye care looks like and how it can help you protect and preserve your vision for the long term.
What is Comprehensive Eye Care?
Comprehensive can mean different things but at Boston Vision, we mean a specific, regular set of eye tests and measurements that provide a detailed picture of how your eyes are seeing and how your vision may be changing over time. During a comprehensive eye exam, we will not only give you a vision test, but also test your depth perception, color vision, peripheral vision, pupil response, and eye muscle movement. We’ll ask you about your medical history and any changes in medications you might have had since the last visit. Finally, we’ll evaluate your eye health using microscopes and provide additional tests as needed.
Who Needs Comprehensive Eye Exams?
In short, everyone can benefit from regular comprehensive eye exams. For example, if you currently wear glasses or contact lenses and haven’t changed your prescription in over a year, you might have the wrong prescription, which can lead to increased eye strain and fatigue, increasing your risk of headaches and migraine.
In addition, people over the age of 65 should get annual eye checks, as this age is statistically more likely to experience gradual eye health decline and conditions like cataracts or macular degeneration. People who are at higher risk of eye disease or poor eye health due to a family or personal history of eye disease should also see an ophthalmologist regularly, as often as once every two years if no sudden vision changes occur.
How is Comprehensive Care Different Than Regular Eye Exams?
In most routine eye exams, the main or sole purpose is to identify what visual acuity treatment and prescription is right for you. These can be conducted by optometrists or ophthalmologists, but the ones at eyeglass stores or pharmacies are usually optometrists, who do not have the same medical knowledge as ophthalmologists.
Routine exams check for refractive abnormalities, things like nearsightedness or astigmatism, then use a tool called a phoropter to fine-tune the type of lens that is best for your needs. They stop short of imaging the interior of the eye, checking for peripheral vision, and examining your eyes with a microscope.
Comprehensive Eye Care at Boston Vision
The team of ophthalmologists at Boston Vision are passionate about educating patients and people about eye health and providing holistic treatments using the latest technologies available to us. Your eyes deserve to be taken good care of, and especially for people with a higher risk of ocular disease, this is a key way to prevent the worst outcomes with early intervention. To learn more about our services and how we can help you see the world more clearly, don’t hesitate to reach out to us online or call the location closest to you today.
