services
Vision Exams
Have you noticed yourself squinting to read street signs, straining to see the TV, or getting headaches after long periods of reading or computer work? These could be signs that it’s time for a Vision Exam.
At Laurel Eye Clinic, our experienced optometrist provide complete vision exams for the whole family. During a comprehensive exam, we’ll check your overall eye health, test your vision acuity, and determine if you have conditions like nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, or presbyopia.
We have the latest technology to give you the most accurate prescription possible. This ensures any glasses or contacts you get will have you seeing clearly and comfortably again. No more blurry vision or eye fatigue!
Vision exams are quick and painless, but hugely beneficial. Healthy eyes are essential for work, hobbies, driving, and daily life. Don’t delay – book your Vision Exam today!
20/20 vision is normal vision acuity (the clarity or sharpness of vision) measured at a distance of 20 feet. If you have 20/20 vision, you can see clearly at 20 feet what should normally be seen at a distance. If you have 20/100 vision, you must be as close as 20 feet to see what a person with normal vision can see at 100 feet.
No. 20/20 vision only indicates the sharpness or clarity of vision at a specific test distance. Other important vision skills, including peripheral awareness or side vision, eye coordination, depth perception, focusing ability and color vision, contribute to your overall vision ability.
No. 15/15 vision means normal sharpness of vision at 15 feet, just as 20/20 indicates normal sharpness of vision at 20 feet. For consistency, doctors of optometry in the United Sates use 20 feet as the standard for measuring sharpness of vision. Other countries express visual acuity in their own way. In England, for example, doctors of optometry express visual acuity in meters (6/6 is considered normal).
Many factors affect visual acuity. Vision conditions, like nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism, or eye diseases affect clarity of vision.
Some people can see well at a distance but cannot bring nearer objects into focus. The condition can be caused by hyperopia (farsightedness) or presbyopia (loss of focusing ability). Others can see items that are close but cannot see items that are far away. This condition may be caused by myopia (nearsightedness).
In a comprehensive eye examination, a doctor of optometry can diagnose what causes, if any, are affecting your ability to see well. In most cases, your doctor of optometry can prescribe glasses, contact lenses or a vision therapy program that can help improve your vision. If the reduced vision is due to an eye disease, your doctor might prescribe eye medication or another treatment.
services
Contact Lenses
Contact lenses prescribed by a licensed doctor of optometry are worn safely and comfortably by millions of people worldwide and have a long history of providing wearers with a safe and effective form of vision correction.
While contact lenses provide many vision benefits, they are not risk-free. A doctor of optometry helps patients better understand how to get the full benefits of contact lenses and reduce the chances of developing problems.
Protect eye and vision health with proper hygiene.
Contact lens-related eye infections and other injuries can lead to long-lasting damage but often are preventable. Clean and safe handling of contact lenses is one of the easiest and most important measures patients can take to protect their vision. Hygiene is the most critical aspect of successful long-term contact lens wear.
Many common care mistakes, including failing to clean and store lenses as directed by a doctor of optometry and sleeping while wearing contacts, can increase the chance of getting bacteria in the eyes and causing infection. Serious eye infections can lead to blindness and affect up to one out of every 500 contact lens users per year, and even minor infections can be painful and disrupt day-to-day life.
A contact lens is a medical device that requires a prescription.
All contact lenses, even purely cosmetic ones, are considered medical devices and require a prescription. If contact lenses are right for you, your doctor of optometry will provide you with the lenses, lens care kits, individual instructions for wear and care and follow-up visits over a specified time. The initial visit and examination can take an hour or longer.
Contact lens prescriptions generally expire on a yearly basis, unless otherwise determined by a doctor of optometry. Prescriptions for contact lenses and glasses may be similar but are not interchangeable. Also, different contact lenses often are made from different materials and in different sizes, some of which can be comfortable and healthy for you to wear, while others can lead to discomfort and even eye health problems. A prescription for contact lenses, therefore, involves more than simply knowing the optical power that corrects for nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism.
services
Diabetic Eye Exam
Diabetes is a condition that prevents the body from using and storing sugar properly. As a result, excessive amounts of sugar remain in the bloodstream and if uncontrolled, can cause damage to the tiny blood vessels all over the body, including those in your eyes.
Diabetic retinopathy affects 30 percent of people with diabetes.
Diabetic retinopathy occurs when the blood vessels inside the eye start to leak blood and fluid into the retina, causing damage and permanent vision loss. Early detection and treatment are crucial for preserving your eyesight.
While patients with uncontrolled blood sugar levels have a higher risk of diabetic retinopathy, those with controlled diabetes are still at risk.
For this reason, eye doctors recommend annual eye exams for early detection of the disease and increased optimal treatment results. By regularly monitoring your ocular health, you are ensuring that any changes that occur will be detected early, before they can cause any harm.
Diabetic eye exams are similar to regular eye exams in many ways. However, during a diabetic eye exam, your eye doctor will specifically focus on the health of your retina and integrity of the blood vessels in your eye.
Every diabetic eye exam requires pupil dilation for a clear view of your eyes’ inner structures— specifically, your retina, optic nerve, and blood vessels in the back of your eye.
Your eye doctor will dilate your pupils by inserting special eye drops into your lower eyelids. The eye drops take about 10 minutes to work, and typically cause temporary blurred near vision and light sensitivity. These side effects generally subside within a few hours.
In some cases, after a retinal exam, additional tests will be recommended for further examination.
services
Plaquenil Eye Exam
Plaquenil (Hydroxychloroquine sulfate) is a drug used to treat certain autoimmune diseases. This type of disease happens when the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy tissue. Some diseases treated with Plaquenil are:
- Lupus, which causes fever, rashes, skin problems, and other symptoms.
- Rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that causes pain and swelling in the joints of your hands and feet.
- Sjögren’s syndrome, which causes dry eyes and dry mouth.
Plaquenil lowers your immune system’s ability to cause inflammation. This can help control symptoms like rashes, skin and mouth sores and joint pain.
If you take Plaquenil, it is important to see an optometrist while you take this medicine.
A rare side effect of Plaquenil is damage to the eye’s retina. The retina is the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. Using Plaquenil for a long period of time may harm the retina, causing serious vision loss.
People with retinal damage from Plaquenil are not aware at first that they are losing vision. Unfortunately, vision loss from Plaquenil can be permanent. If you take Plaquenil, it is very important to see an optometrist regularly. Your optometrist will check your retina for problems before serious damage occurs.
If you take Plaquenil, here is when to see an optometrist:
- Within the first year of beginning Plaquenil, you should have a “baseline” eye exam. This measures the health of your eyes and looks for retinal or macular disease.
- Once a year while taking Plaquenil.
- After five years of Plaquenil treatment, for those on acceptable doses without major risk factors, see your optometrist annually (once per year).
For those on acceptable doses with major risk factor(s) for retinal damage from Plaquenil, you may need to see your optometrist more often. Special tests can help find early damage to the retina before serious problems develop.
Your optometrist may use these tests to look for retinal damage from Plaquenil:
- Visual field test: During this test you sit down and look into a machine. Small lights flash at different points inside the machine. When you see the lights, you press a button. This test can help find if blind spots have developed in your field of vision.
- OCT imaging: This test makes a detailed, three-dimensional image of your eye. Your optometrist can use this image to look for early retinal damage.
- Photos: A special camera takes pictures of the retina. Photos show damaged areas as small spots of light.
If you take Plaquenil, it is important to see an optometrist while you take this medicine.
If your optometrist finds any signs of retinal damage, they will tell your primary care doctor or inflammatory disease specialist to stop Plaquenil treatment immediately. This will help you avoid central vision loss. Unfortunately, vision loss from Plaquenil is not reversible. So early detection of early retinal changes and stopping Plaquenil are the only steps that will protect your vision. This will help you avoid permanent vision loss. Your other doctor will find another treatment for your disease.
services
Dry Eye
Dry eyes can occur when tear production and drainage are not in balance. People with dry eyes either do not produce enough tears or their tears are of a poor quality.
Inadequate Amount of Tears
Tears are produced by several glands in and around the eyelids. Tear production tends to diminish with age, with various medical conditions or as a side effect of certain medicines. Environmental conditions, such as wind and dry climates, can also decrease tear volume due to increased tear evaporation. When the normal amount of tear production decreases or tears evaporate too quickly from the eyes, symptoms of dry eye can develop.
Poor Quality of Tears
Tears are made up of three layers: oil, water, and mucus. Each component protects and nourishes the front surface of the eye. A smooth oil layer helps prevent evaporation of the water layer, while the mucin layer spreads the tears evenly over the surface of the eye. If the tears evaporate too quickly or do not spread evenly over the cornea due to deficiencies with any of the three tear layers, dry eye symptoms can develop.
Dry Eyes Can Develop For Many Reasons, Including:
Treatment
Treatments for dry eyes aim to restore or maintain the normal amount of tears in the eye to minimize dryness and related discomfort and to maintain eye health. Dry eyes can be a chronic condition, but a doctor of optometry can prescribe treatment to keep your eyes healthy and comfortable and to prevent your vision from being affected. The primary approaches used to manage and treat dry eyes include adding tears using over-the-counter artificial tear solutions, conserving tears, increasing tear production, and treating the inflammation of the eyelids or eye surface that contributes to the dry eyes.
services
Glaucoma
Glaucoma is a group of eye disorders that lead to progressive damage to the optic nerve. It is characterized by loss of nerve tissue that results in vision loss. People with glaucoma can lose nerve tissue, resulting in vision loss.
The optic nerve is a bundle of about 1 million individual nerve fibers that transmit visual signals from the eye to the brain. In the most common form of glaucoma, primary open-angle glaucoma, the fluid pressure inside the eye increases. This increase in pressure may cause progressive damage to the optic nerve and loss of nerve fibers. Advanced glaucoma may even lead to blindness. Not everyone with high eye pressure will develop glaucoma, and some people with normal eye pressure will develop glaucoma. When the pressure inside a person’s eye is too high for a particular optic nerve, whatever that pressure measurement may be, glaucoma will develop. Glaucoma is the second-leading cause of blindness in the U.S. It most often occurs in people over age 40, although an infant (congenital) form of glaucoma exists. People with a family history of glaucoma, African Americans over the age of 40 and Hispanics over the age of 60 have an increased risk of developing glaucoma. Other risk factors include thinner corneas, chronic eye inflammation and taking medications that increase the pressure in the eyes.
Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma
The most common form of glaucoma, primary open-angle glaucoma, develops slowly and usually without any symptoms. Many people are not aware they have the condition until they have significant vision loss. Initially, glaucoma affects peripheral or side vision, but it can advance to central vision loss. If left untreated, glaucoma can lead to significant vision loss in both eyes and may even lead to blindness.
Acute Angle-Closure Glaucoma
A less common type of glaucoma, acute angle-closure glaucoma, usually occurs abruptly due to a rapid increase of pressure in the eye. Its symptoms may include severe eye pain, nausea, redness in the eye, seeing halos or colored rings around lights and blurred vision. This is an emergency condition in which severe vision loss can occur quickly; see your doctor of optometry immediately. Glaucoma cannot currently be prevented. But if it is diagnosed and treated early, it can usually be controlled. Medication or surgery can slow or prevent further vision loss. However, vision already lost to glaucoma cannot be restored. That is why the American Optometric Association recommends an annual dilated eye examination for people at risk for glaucoma. Depending on your specific condition, your doctor may recommend more frequent examinations.
services
Macular Degeneration
Macular Degeneration is an eye disease affecting the macula (the center of the light-sensitive retina at the back of the eye), causing loss of central vision.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe vision loss in adults over age 50. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1.8 million people have AMD and another 7.3 million are at substantial risk for vision loss from AMD. Caucasians are at higher risk for developing AMD than other races. Women also develop AMD at an earlier age than men. This eye disease occurs when there are changes to the macula, a small portion of the retina that is located on the inside back layer of the eye. AMD is a loss of central vision that can occur in two forms: “dry” (atrophic) and “wet” (exudative). Most people with macular degeneration have the dry form. While there is no specific treatment for dry AMD, studies have shown a potential benefit from vitamin supplements, a Mediterranean diet, protection from the ultraviolet light of the sun and cessation of smoking. The less common wet form may respond to intraocular injections of anti-VEGF medications if detected and treated early.
If experiencing any of the above signs or symptoms, contact a doctor of optometry immediately for a comprehensive eye examination. Tests will determine if one has macular degeneration or any other eye health problems. A doctor of optometry can also provide a simple take-home screening test called an Amsler Grid. Central vision that is lost to macular degeneration cannot be restored. However, low-vision devices, such as telescopic and microscopic lenses, can maximize existing vision.
With “dry” macular degeneration, the tissue of the macula gradually becomes thin and stops working properly. There is no cure for dry AMD, and any loss in central vision cannot be restored. However, researchers and doctors believe there is a link between nutrition and the progression of dry AMD. Making dietary changes and taking nutritional supplements can slow vision loss. Less common, “wet” macular degeneration occurs when fluids leak from newly formed blood vessels under the macula. This leakage blurs central vision. Vision loss can be rapid and severe. If detected early, wet AMD can be treated with intraocular injections of anti-VEGF medications. Researchers have linked eye-friendly nutrients such as lutein and zeaxanthin, omega 3 supplements or consumption of fatty fishes, vitamin C, vitamin E and zinc to reducing the risk of certain eye diseases, including macular degeneration. For more information on the importance of good nutrition and eye health, please see the diet and nutrition section.