Common Concerns

One of the bigger things that we hear from patients is “Oh I don’t think I need an eye exam, I can see good, I passed my driver’s license test, so I’m really not having too much of a problem.” But what we will see quite often is that a patient will come in and not notice that one of their eyes is significantly blurrier than the other eye and they won’t notice it until they sit here in the exam chair, cover one eye, and then cover the other eye. The next thing is that your vision change is very gradual, very slow; it’s not like you’re going to wake up one morning and say “I can’t see across the street.” Generally these changes are very slow, very gradual, so we’d like to examine your eyes yearly or on a bi-annual basis, depending on your age. Lastly, patients who have problems with high blood pressure, diabetes, or any of these conditions that affect the vascular system, will discover that they also affect the eyes.

Again, not something that you’ll notice, it may not even affect the sharpness of your vision but when we’re looking in the eye, we can tell if you’re having problems from your diabetes or if your blood pressure is not under control. Even things such as cholesterol shooting off plaque from your carotid artery can effect or even cause a loss of vision.