Eyesight Testing: Vision Eyesight Testing

Many people have often called our eyes the windows into our soul; this is because they can tell a lot about a person. Their emotions, their moods and even their health, our eyes are the most important part of us and we at times tend to take them for granted until we think we are going to lose our eye sight. Then we do anything in our power to keep it and get it back to normal. One of the ways to check or help restore your eyes back to normal is to have a frequent eye exam.

Visual Acuity Test

This test is one of the simplest and most common ways to check a person's eye sight. It tests the focus of your eyes and how you can se detail in near and far distances. This evolves reading and looking at letters and symbols of different shapes and sizes on an eye chart. This test also tests for problems such as farsightedness and near sidedness.

Vision field tests

A person's visual field is the entire area that a person see's when the person's gaze is fixed in one direction. Visual field tests can help detect eye diseases such as macular degeneration and glaucoma, or any nervous system problems caused by a stroke or head injury. These problems can limit a person's ability to see objects clearly in the entire visual field or create blind spots. Normally, a person's visual field forms a rough circle with a natural blind spot that is some where in the middle. There are several tests that can be done to help detect reduced visual range and abnormal blind spots.

Color Vision Tests

Color vision testing checks a person's ability to see colors and is part of an eye exam. It is also used to test for color blindness in people with retinal or optic nerve disease or a family history of color blindness. The most commonly used color vision test involves tracing colored numbers that are hidden in a background of colored dots. People who are unable to see the colored patterns, or can only pick certain ones, you might have a color vision problem.

Who needs to have their vision tested?

Routine vision testing is usually a part of every general physical exam beginning in childhood and continues on into adult hood. Who needs to have eye test and what is the youngest age for a child to have eye test?

Infants: Eye exams should be taken before age 4 if you have a family history of childhood eye problems, especially any kind of genetic eye diseases. Also if your baby was born prematurely. And if you see any sins of misaligned eyes, lazy eye, or nearsightedness are present. Also if the baby's eye is red, swollen, or cloudy. If the mother has sexually transmitted disease when giving birth to a baby then this might affect the babies eye sight so if you have had an STD when giving birth be sure to tell your doctor and have the child tested for vision problems right away because it can sometimes lead to blindness in a baby.

Children & Teenagers: When they become toddlers they should have their vision tested between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Older children and teenagers who show no signs vision problems should have their vision checked every 3-4 years.

Adults: People between the ages 20 to 40 should have an eye exam every 5 years, unless you are having vision problems then you need to get them checked right away. People between the ages of 40 to 64 should have an eye exam every 2-4 years. People between the ages of 65 and over every 1-2 years People with diabetes are at risk for several eye disorders, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and cataracts, and should have eye examinations every year.
Regular eye exams are an important part of maintaining good health so it is best to have them often.

Eye exams can show early signs of eye diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration for school-aged kids, eye exams can detect poor vision, which is a problem for them to learn and do well in school. Eye problems are the most common cause of children doing poorly in school and having problems with their schoolwork.

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