General Eye Examinations

All of our doctors provide general vision care to people 3 to 103 years old.  Our general exam is a comprehensive evaluation of the eye health, refractive status, and functional aspects of your visual system.  We take into consideration a person’s general health, family history, lifestyle, and visual demands of work, school, and hobbies.  Treatment options may include eye exercises, glasses, contact lenses, medication, nutritional supplements, or stress-relieving suggestions.  We use state-of-the-art equipment to evaluate the health of the eye and visual system.  Our retinal camera allows us to take photographs that provide a permanent record of the health of your retina.  We use the Humphries Field Analyzer for visual field testing, which is important for testing and treating glaucoma as well as evaluating the visual effects of stroke and other health issues.

At school, work, or during leisure activities, vision affects how we live our lives.  We take seriously your visual welfare.  We believe that it is easier to prevent vision problems than to restore lost vision.  To this end, we suggest a comprehensive eye health and vision examination every year for any person diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension or other systemic disorders known to affect the eyes.  For those blessed with excellent health, a comprehensive eye exam is recommended every two years.

Eye Health

Getting your eyes checked is not just about getting the best prescription for your glasses or contact lenses.  Although we take this very seriously, we also recognize the importance of monitoring your eye health.  Many systemic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, or thyroid dysfunctions, can affect your eyes.  Many problems that lead to vision loss can be detected and treated, or vision loss avoided, by early detection. By looking inside your eyes with special equipment or dilating drops, we can detect early changes that may affect your vision or general health in the future.  If you wear contact lenses, we pay special attention to your corneal health.  Again, we can monitor and detect early changes in the eye that can lead to larger problems if left unattended.  Depending upon your general and eye health, we will advise you how often you should have your eyes examined.

Vision Therapy

We offer in-office, home-based, and computer-based vision therapy.

Vision therapy is an individualized treatment program prescribed to prevent the development of certain vision problems, to improve conditions like crossed eye (strabismus) or lazy eye (amblyopia), or to help a person learn to enhance specific visual skills.  The visual skills which can be developed and enhanced through vision therapy include:

·         Tracking . The ability to follow a moving object smoothly and accurately with both eyes, such as a ball in flight or moving vehicles in traffic.

·         Fixation. The ability to quickly and accurately locate and inspect with both eyes a series of stationary objects, one after another, such as moving from word to word while reading.

·         Focus change. The ability to look quickly from far to near and vice versa without momentary blur, such as looking from dashboard to cars on the street, or from the chalkboard to a book.

·         Depth perception.  The ability to judge relative distances of objects and to see and move accurately in three-dimensional space, such as when hitting a ball, walking in crowded areas, or parking a car.

·         Peripheral vision. The ability to monitor and interpret what is happening around you while you are attending to a specific central visual task; the ability to use the visual information perceived from over a large area.

·         Binocularity. The ability to use both eyes together smoothly, equally, simultaneously and accurately.

·         Maintaining visual attention.  The ability to keep doing any particular visual task with ease and without interfering with the performance of other skills, tasks, or activities.

·         Near Vision. The ability to clearly see, inspect, identify and understand objects at near distances, within arm’s length.

·         Distance Vision. The ability to clearly see, inspect, identify and understand objects at a distance.  People with 20/20 distance sight still may have severe visual problems.