Comprehensive Eye Exam
Regular eye exams are important not just to make sure your prescription is up to date, but also to check for signs of eye disease, many of which have no obvious symptoms in the early stages.
Advanced family eye care
At our Plano eye care center, we offer comprehensive eye care for all the family. From a young age, everyone should have an eye exam at least every 2 years. Vision is important to support learning as a child, and as you grow into adulthood you want your eyesight to remain good for many years. Your best chance of making this happen is to have regular comprehensive eye exams.
Standard eye exam
Our standard eye exams take around 30 minutes. We’ll talk to you about your medical history and do several tests to check the health and acuity of your vision. The tests we do include:
- LipiScanⓇ, which scans your meibomian glands to check for dysfunction that can lead to dry eye
- Specular microscopy, a non-invasive way to view the corneal endothelium and look for changes that can occur with age or disease
- Retinal photography, which takes a picture of the back of your eye to check for signs of disease
- Pachymetry, which measures corneal thickness and is used in testing for glaucoma and other eye diseases
- Phoropter, used to evaluate any astigmatism, nearsightedness, or farsightedness
- Retinoscope, which measures how light focuses on your retina when trying different lenses.
Advanced eye exam
Our advanced eye exam takes around 45 minutes and includes all of the above, plus an OCT scan. OCT stands for optical coherence tomography and is an advanced 3D scan of the back of your eye. It works a bit like an ultrasound but uses light waves instead of sound.
The scan shows the different layers of the retina in minute detail, giving a much more detailed image than regular retinal photography. This enables the optometrist to look for tiny aberrations that could indicate eye disease in its earliest stages when it is most treatable. Eye conditions that can be diagnosed include age-related macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, retinal tears, detachments and tumours.
The OCT scan will be kept on file and can be referred to each time you return for an eye exam, making it easier for the optometrist to recognize any changes in your eye.
How often should you have an eye exam?
The American Optometric Association (AOA) recommends that adults who wear glasses or contact lenses should have an eye exam every year. Those who don’t need vision correction are advised to have an eye exam every 2 years or annually over the age of 40. If you’re over 60, you’re at higher risk of developing an eye condition such as cataracts or macular degeneration so you should take advice from your eye doctor about how often to have eye exams. Children should have eye exams every year or 2 years depending on their situation.
If it’s been more than a year since your last check-up, we recommend you contact our eye doctors in Plano, TX to Book an Appointment.
