To ensure a good overall health, you have to be proactive. Visiting your optometrist in Oakville once your symptoms have gotten worse can cause serious effects to your eyes. By scheduling regular eye checkups and exams, you are doing an important and safe step in giving the best possible care for your eyes and your overall health.
Know that going to your eye doctor in Oakville is not only about getting your current eye condition treated. Doing so will also decrease the changes of the development of other eye problems. Optometrists are professionally trained to diagnose and treat any abnormal eye problems as soon as they are detected, which should help you save time, money and health.
What Problems will Optometrists Check For?
In an eye exam, the optometrist in Oakville will determine the quality of your vision, looking for symptoms that can signify an eye disease or disorder. Here are some of the most common symptoms:
- Refractive errors. This refers to nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. These can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, and refractive surgery.
- Amblyopia. With this condition, the eyes are turned, or one has a different prescription than the other. This causes the brain to shut off the image from the turned eye. If not treated, this visual development of the affected eye can be stunted.
- Strabismus. Otherwise known as crossed or turned eyes, the optometrist will check your eye alignment to make sure that they are working together. This can lead to depth perception problems and, ultimately, amblyopia if left untreated.
- Eye teaming problems. Your eyes might be aligned properly but they might not work together efficiently. Such binocular vision leaders to headaches and eye strain, affecting reading and other near vision tasks.
- Focusing problems. This can range from undeveloped focusing skill among children to normal age-related decline in the focusing ability among the elderly.
- Eye diseases. There are diseases, like glaucoma and retinopathy, that do not show symptoms in their early stages unless assess by an eye doctor in Oakville. Early detection can help reduce the risk of permanent vision loss.
- Other diseases. Optometrists can detect early signs of diseases by looking into your retina and its blood vessels, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
What Eye Tests do Optometrists Perform?
Oakville optometrists can perform several eye tests, depending on your eye problem. These tests give important information on your eyes’ function. Here are some of their most common exams.
- Visual field. Used to check for a possible glaucoma development, this test will give your optometrist a chance to also look for aneurysms, strokes, brain tumors and other brain-related diseases common among the elderly.
- Eye pressures. This will check for the possible development of glaucoma. It uses a measuring device that will determine if there is an increasing pressure in your eyes.
- Refraction. This procedure will check for vision problems and indicate a possible development of cataracts, diabetes and other thyroid-related problem.
- Slit lamp. This is a test that will aid the optometrist in detecting eyelid disease, dry eye, pingueculae or pterygium, and corneal dystrophies.
- Dilated retinal exam. Detecting a number of health conditions and diseases, this inexpensive and painless exam greatly helps in the detection of glaucoma. It can give the eye doctor a good view of the macula and see signs of diabetes and macular degeneration.
By visiting your eye doctor in Oakville regularly, you should be able to prevent many eye diseases and disorders from growing worse, saving you time and money. Ensure that your eyes remain in its top working condition by scheduling regular consultations with us. Whatever your age, symptoms, or current health status is, we will ensure that you receive the best possible care so your eyes and vision stays in its optimal condition for as long as possible.
