You may have experienced some sort of issues with your eyes before, whether you are suffering from dizziness, strained eyes, blurred vision or even pain. For minor issues such as vision correction and even a simple eye test, you would approach either an optometrist or an optician to resolve it. For serious cases involving surgery, you would need to approach an ophthalmologist. In this article, we will look at some of the vision correcting devices and how to assess the general condition of your eyes.
Spectacles
A spectacle is a medical device that consists of a frame with a glass or plastic lens set inside the frame, and it is worn by people who require vision correction. The frame is fabricated mostly with metal, aluminium, stainless steel and even plastic. To determine the correct lenses that are suited for you, the optometrist/optician will have you undergo a series of eye tests first. An established and professional eye care centre will normally be able to advise you on the different aspects of vision correcting medical devices.
Contact lenses
Some people feel that wearing a spectacle would feel clunky on their face and obscure some of their facial aspects. They would have a few options like going for a surgery to correct their vision or even wearing contact lenses. The wearing of contact lenses allows you to enjoy high intensity sports and other activities without worrying about your spectacles falling off due to sweat or a sudden movement. The only drawback is that you cannot wear it for an extended period of time, shower or swim with them on.
Different usages and different specifications
There are many variations and usages when it comes to these medical devices. For example, the spectacles can be further categorised into sunglasses where they have regular tinted, polarised, and even transitional lenses. An optometrist/optician will need to assess your condition before prescribing you concave lenses (myopia), convex lenses (hypermetropia), or even bifocal lenses, etc. For contact lenses, they have daily, weekly and monthly disposal ones to suit your requirements.
Going for periodic checkups
It is important to always go for a comprehensive eye check up at least once per year to detect any abnormalities or changes in the structure, or whether you have diabetes, macular degeneration, melanoma, any tumours present, etc. This will help in the early diagnosis or even prevention of any condition. Always ask for a detailed and advanced eye examination instead of just a simple one.
Choosing the right provider
A certified provider should keep up with the trends in technology by having the latest equipment to diagnose or assess the severity of your condition. A 3D Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) scan of your retina would be able to detect the early stages of conditions such as: hypertension, glaucoma, diabetes and even age-related macular degeneration.
With the recent advances in healthcare and technology, a simple eye test is not sufficient to determine the overall health of your eyes anymore. If you have a child or you are an elderly person, you are more at risk of developing vision problems and you should not skip an eye examination for the sake of convenience.
