Eye care professionals will employ quite a few tests to examine your eyes for a variety of things like vision impairment to disease. An eye care exam can be simple or it can be rather comprehensive with at least eight different tests to conduct. It can take up to an hour for a thorough inspection of the eyes.

Refraction Test

This part of the eye care exam is used to determine your correct prescription needed for contacts or glasses. During this procedure, the eye doctor uses a special machine called a phoropter which has these lens gadgets for each eye. You look through these special lenses while the doctor fine tunes them up until you are seeing with 20/20 vision or better. These lenses tell what your eyeglass prescription is and whether you are nearsighted or far-sighted or astigmatism.

Retinoscopy’s Just the Beginning

Your eye care exam typically starts with a retinoscopy which is a test to help determine which general direction your prescription may be. The doctor flips different lenses over your eyes as you stare through this machine while looking at an eye chart with the proverbial “E” at the very top. This initial eye care exam is a helpful one for those who cannot accurately convey their answers to certain questions.

Take Cover with Aberrometers and Autorefractors

An aberrometer employs a specialized wavefront technology which is essential in an eye exam, especially when diagnosing rare vision problems. The autorefractor helps in determine your eyeglass or contact lens prescription.

One of the simplest parts of an eye care exam is the cover test in which the doctor focuses you in on one particular object in the distant while getting you to cover one eye at a time while you look at the object. This test helps measure how much your eye turns which can also lead to diagnosis of tunnel vision as well as lack of depth perception.

Dilating Pupils

There are special eye drops which make the pupil dilate or grow larger and these are called dilation drops. The doctors employ this method because they could view a large portion of the inside of the eye to check for abnormalities. These drops affect your vision and can take time to wear off so always ask your doctor if dilation is the plan when you book your eye care exam.

There are many other tests that can be administered depending on what information you have shared with the doctor such as glaucoma, visual field testing and a slip lamp exam. Each eye care exam is unique and can tell you all about your eye health.