With the Alberta Association of Optometrists, and other leading optometric organizations, recommending annual eye exams for healthy Canadian adults & seniors, we can’t stress the importance of an eye exams enough.
As we get older, we have to focus a little more on maintaining our physical well being than we did in our youth. Even when the rest of your body (and mind) is perfectly healthy, vision-threatening eye conditions can still arise – the key to staying ahead of them is a comprehensive annual eye exam.
The trouble with many progressive diseases like age-related macular degeneration or glaucoma, is that they initially present with very few, if any, symptoms. They also target older individuals, leaving those over 65 years old at a higher risk of developing eye diseases.
An eye exam every 12 months allows us to diagnose vision-threatening eye diseases long before symptoms may show.
Our eye exams are thorough, but relaxed and comfortable. We take your well-being seriously, so please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your visit more comfortable!
After our initial conversation about any symptoms you might be facing and your ocular and medical history, we start our preliminary testing. Note that we use dilating drops during our senior exams to ensure we get as much information from your eyes as possible. Your eyes will remain dilated for approximately 2-3 hours, meaning that it will be very bright outside, so you will need a ride home from your appointment, as you will not be able to drive.
These tests approximate your prescription and measure the curve of your corneas. This helps inform your corrective lens prescription and highlights changes in your refraction.
This test measures eye pressure, a key indicator in the development of glaucoma.
Using specialized equipment (think: a really powerful camera), we take detailed images of your retinas inside your eyes. This is extremely effective when looking for signs of macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and other eye diseases that present changes in your eye health.
OCT imaging provides cross-sectional images of your corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and other components of your eyes. This process, like digital retinal photography, is non-invasive, and very powerful.
Then it’s onto the eye exam itself. This should take less than an hour, using the results from the preliminary tests as a base to look for prescription changes, age-related eye diseases, and other conditions.
We determine which type and strength of corrective lenses provide ideal vision. Repeat after us: Number one, or number two?
We determine how well your eye muscles perform their duties, assessing their function and performance across a range of vision tests.
Using a powerful microscope, we examine your eyes. This exam looks at the anterior segment of the eyes, inspecting for things like corneal disease, conjunctivitis, cataracts, and other indicators of eye health.
This routine test is done after dilation, and is used to examine the retina at the back of the eye. It is non-invasive and allows us to gather important information about your eye health.
Chestermere Optometry
