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Our comprehensive eye examinations will evaluate all aspects of your vision and eye health.

The comprehensive eye screening includes a detailed examination of all parts of your eyes as well as an extensive check of your eyes with advanced scans and screening tests to check your eye health and look for any signs of eye disease.

Our experienced optometrists will test your vision in a variety of ways.

  • External Exam – This is an evaluation of the Sclera (white of your eye), the iris (coloured part of your eye), the pupil, your eyelids and eyelashes.
  • Internal Exam – This is an evaluation of the retina and optic nerve. We will examine the internal part of your eye while they are dilated.
  • Visual Function and Eye Health – This includes the testing of depth perception, colour vision, peripheral vision, and the response of the pupils to light, as well as an evaluation of eye focusing, eye teaming, and your eye movement abilities.
  • Glaucoma Testing – This is a test of fluid pressure within your eyes to check for the possibility of glaucoma.
  • Visual Acuity – Your consultant will test your vision with different lenses to determine if glasses or contact lenses can improve your vision.
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If you’ve had an eye screening recently, you might say, “My vision is fine! I don’t need a comprehensive eye exam.”

But a routine vision screening provides a limited perspective on the overall health of your eyes. It’s a bit like getting your blood pressure checked and not getting the rest of your annual physical. You’ll have useful information, but it’s not the whole picture.

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What Are The Limitations Of A Simple Eye Test?

Simple eye tests only evaluate your ability to see clearly in the distance. This is called visual acuity (VA) and it is just one factor of your overall vision. Some may include colour vision, peripheral vision, and depth perception. These screenings also do not evaluate how well the eyes focus close up or how they work together. More importantly, it doesn’t give any information about the health of your eyes.

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Simple eye tests are conducted by individuals untrained in eye health.

General eye tests or vision checks are offered in many places – schools, health fairs, as part of a work physical or for a driver’s license. Even if your physician conducts the screening, he/she is a generalist and only has access to a certain amount of eye health training. Most individuals don’t have the tools or knowledge to give you a complete assessment of your vision or eye health.

Eye tests may use inadequate testing equipment.

In some cases, a visual screening or eye test is limited to an eye chart across the room. Even when conducted in a physician's office, they won’t have the extensive testing equipment of a trained optometrist.

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What Are The Benefits Of A Comprehensive Eye Exam?

Comprehensive eye exams look at the totality of your health history. Just because you visit a separate office for your eye health, that doesn’t mean your eyes also shouldn’t be treated holistically. Your eye specialist will discuss your overall health and that of your immediate family, they will assess any medications that you’re taking, and whether you have high blood pressure and diabetes. They’ll also want to know if you smoke and how much sun exposure you get. All these factors will help us properly assess your eye health.

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What Happens During A Comprehensive Eye Examination?

What Happens During a Comprehensive Eye Examination?

The tests included in a comprehensive eye examination may vary. This can change according to a patient’s age, general health, and family history.

Our specialist will take a brief medical history, and then decide what is needed. Trained ophthalmic technicians will usually assist with some of the testing.

  • Visual Acuity - assesses how clear your vision is. Most people are familiar with the large paper chart (or computerised projection) with a large “E” at the top. It measures what is considered normal vision at 20 feet.
  • Slit Lamp Examination – to look inside the eye for signs of eye conditions and diseases.
  • Refraction Check - an exam technique that uses an instrument to determine your glasses or contact lens prescription.
  • Visual Fields - to look for blind spots or problems with peripheral (side) vision.
  • Cover Test - to check for binocular vision and detect abnormal alignment of the eyes.
  • Auto-Refractor or Retinoscopy - to check the curvature or your eyes and estimate your glasses prescription.
  • Glaucoma Test (also known as Tonometry) - measures the pressure within the eye.
  • Evaluation of the optic nerve, retina, and blood vessels with an ophthalmoscope and slit lamp usually conducted after pupil dilation.
  • Detailed scan of your cornea (front of the eye), by a pentacam and other topography scans.
  • Detailed scan of your Retina and Macula (back of your eye), by an OCT scan.

We are committed to providing the very best quality when it comes to eye examinations and we dedicate sufficient time to all patients to ensure the very best in service and eye care.

What Does An Eye Exam Involve?

An eye exam involves a series of tests to evaluate your vision and check for eye diseases. Your eye doctor is likely to use various instruments, shine bright lights at your eyes and request that you look through an array of lenses. Each test during an eye exam evaluates a different aspect of your vision or eye health.

Why Do I Need A Check Up?

A complete eye exam will help detect potential eye problems at their earliest stage and when they're most treatable. Regular eye examinations give your eye care professionals a chance to help you correct or adapt to visual changes and provide you with tips on caring for your eyes. And an eye exam can provide clues to your overall health.

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How Often Do I Need An Eye Exam?

Several factors can determine how frequently you need an eye exam, including your age, general health and risk of developing eye problems.

In general, if you are healthy and you have no symptoms of visual problems, it is highly recommended that you have a complete eye exam at least at the age of 40, this is when vision changes and eye diseases are likely to start. Based on the results of your screening, our specialist can recommend how often you should have future eye exams.

If you're 60 or older, have your eyes checked every year or two.

Have your eyes checked more often if you:

  • Wear glasses or contact lenses
  • Have a family history of eye disease or loss of vision
  • Have a chronic disease that puts you at greater risk of eye disease, such as diabetes.
  • Take medications that have serious side effects on your eyes.

What will happen on day of your screening:

  • Measurement of your visual acuity to see if you need glasses or contact lenses to improve your vision.
  • Measurement of your eye pressure. You'll be given a numbing drop in your eyes. To make it easier for your doctor to examine the inside of your eye, he or she will likely give you eyedrops to dilate your eyes.
  • Evaluation of the health of your eyes. After the dilating drops take effect, your eye doctor might use several lights or imaging to evaluate the front of the eye and the inside of each eye.

Different Types Of Eye Exams:

Eye Muscle Test

This test evaluates the muscles that control eye movement. Your eye doctor watches as your eyes follow a moving object, such as a pen or a small light. He or she will look for muscle weaknesses, poor coordination or control.

Visual Acuity Test

This test measures how clearly you see. Your doctor asks you to identify different letters of the alphabet printed on a chart or a screen positioned some distance away. The lines of print get smaller as you successfully move down the chart.

Each eye is tested separately. Your near vision also may be tested, using a card with letters held at reading distance.

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Refraction Assessment

Light waves are bent as they pass through your cornea and lens. If light rays don't focus perfectly on the back of your eye, you have a refractive error. That can mean you need some form of correction, such as glasses, contact lenses or refractive surgery, to see as clearly as possible.

Assessment of your refractive error helps your doctor determine a lens prescription that will give you the sharpest, most comfortable vision. The assessment can also determine that you don't need corrective lenses.

Your doctor may use a computerised refractor to estimate your prescription for glasses or contact lenses. Or he or she may use a technique called retinoscopy. In this procedure, the doctor shines a light into your eye and measures the refractive error by evaluating the movement of the light reflected by your retina back through your pupil.

Your eye doctor usually fine-tunes this refraction assessment by having you look through a mask like device that contains wheels of different lenses (phoropter). He or she asks you to judge which combination of lenses gives you the sharpest vision.

Visual Field Testing

Your visual field is the full extent of what you can see to the sides without moving your eyes. The visual field test determines whether you have difficulty seeing all around in your overall field of vision. Types of visual field tests include:

  • Confrontation exam. Your eye doctor sits directly in front of you and asks you to cover one eye. You look straight ahead and tell the doctor each time you see his or her hand move into view.
  • Manual testing. Confrontational of tangent visual field testing.
  • Automated perimetry. As you look at a screen with blinking lights on it, you press a button each time you see a light.

Using your responses to one or more of these tests, your eye doctor determines the fullness of your field of vision. If you aren't able to see in certain areas, noting the pattern of your visual field loss can help your eye doctor diagnose your eye condition.

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Colour Vision Testing

You could have poor colour vision without realising it. If you have difficulty distinguishing certain colours, your eye doctor might screen your vision for a colour deficiency. To do this, your doctor shows you several multicoloured dot-pattern tests.

If you have no colour deficiency, you'll be able to pick out numbers and shapes from within the dot patterns without difficulty. If you do have a colour deficiency, you'll find it challenging to see certain patterns within the dots.

For most people, colour blindness that's present at birth (congenital) is red-green, meaning you can't distinguish those colours. Most people who develop colour blindness as a result of disease, such as glaucoma or optic nerve disease, can't distinguish blue-yellow.

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Slit-Lamp Examination

A slit lamp is a microscope that magnifies and illuminates the front of your eye with an intense line of light. Your doctor uses this device to examine the eyelids, lashes, cornea, iris, lens and fluid chamber between your cornea and iris.

Your doctor may use a dye, most commonly fluorescein, to colour the film of tears over your eye. This helps reveal damaged cells on the front of your eye. Your tears wash the dye from the surface of your eye fairly quickly.

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Retinal Examination

This examination - sometimes called ophthalmoscopy or funduscopy - allows your doctor to evaluate the back of your eye, including the retina, the optic disk and the retinal blood vessels that nourish the retina. Having your pupils dilated with eyedrops before the exam keeps your pupils from getting smaller when your doctor shines light into the eye.

After administering eyedrops and giving them time to work, your eye doctor may use one or more of these techniques to view the back of your eye:

  • Direct exam. Your eye doctor uses an ophthalmoscope to shine a beam of light through your pupil to see the back of the eye. Sometimes eyedrops aren't necessary to dilate your eyes before this exam.
  • Indirect exam. During this exam, you might sit up or be reclined in the exam chair. Your eye doctor examines the inside of the eye with the aid of a condensing lens and a bright light mounted on his or her forehead. This exam lets your doctor see the retina and other structures inside your eye in great detail and in three dimensions.
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Screening For Glaucoma

Tonometry measures the fluid pressure inside your eye (intraocular pressure). This is one test that helps your eye doctor detect glaucoma, a disease that damages the optic nerve.

Several methods to measure intraocular pressure are available, including:

You might need more specialised tests, depending on your age, medical history and risk of developing eye disease.

Results

Results from an eye exam include:

Dr Amir Mani - Specialist refractive surgeon

One of the most experienced refractive surgeons in London

Dr Mani has performed more than 20,000 ophthalmic procedures, including LASIK, LASEK, PRK, Femto Cataract, RLE, Lens ICL and Phakic IOL Surgery

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