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20/20 vision doesn’t mean healthy vision. You can have 20/20 vision and see perfectly and still have problems with your eyes – things like cataracts, glaucoma, problems from diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and even tumors. So, you can have 20/20 vision but still have problems involving the yes.
A comprehensive eye exam includes, of course, checking to see if your vision is 20/20 or not, up close and far away – so that’ s more of a determination of if you need glasses.
But if your vision isn’t 20/20, there could be a lot of different reasons. So the doctor does several diff tests to determine if it’s just a need for glasses or if there are some eye health concerns.
They will do an evaluation of how well the eyes work together as a team. If they don’t work together as a team, it could be an indication that there is a neurological problem that could be caused by diabetes, or high blood pressure, or a vascular disease.
They will look at the very front of the eye to make sure that there are no cataracts, that there is no involvement that could lead to glaucoma later on, they look at the eyelids, they look at the eyelashes, they look at the skin all around the eyes looking for signs of skin cancer – all of these different things we look at just on the outside of the eye itself.
Very often drops can be put in the eyes so that the pupil gets bigger and that pupil becomes a big window, like the aperture of a camera, allows us to look inside of the eye at the retina at the arteries and veins within the eye than can show signs of diabetes, hypertension, sickle cell anemia, lots of different things that we can see inside the eyes. And also the optic nerve, which is where evidence of glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, and other systemic disease can be seen.
We also look at the side vision because that can be affected by many diseases that you wouldn’t be aware of. And we also do a glaucoma test that measures the pressure inside the eye to make sure that is normal as well.
One of the things to remember, and this is really fascinating about the eye, is that when we do look inside the pupil and through that window, and we see the arteries and veins and the optic nerve, the eye is the only place that we can do that in the body without opening it up with a scalpel. We can see the evidence, whether your vision is 20/20 or not. We can see the evidence if there are systemic diseases or other eye problems that may be causing further problems down the line.
Healthy Eyes
Taking Care of Your Eyes -- Prevention
Dr. Linda M. Chous, O.D., Chief Eye Care Officer, UnitedHealthcare
Having 20/20 vision doesn't necessarily mean you have healthy vision. Find out what doctors look for in an eye exam.
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