Practice preventative eye care throughout your lifetime by having vision examinations and periodic eye care. Doing so enables your ophthalmologist to manage early diagnosis and treatment of vision problems that can cause you to lose your vision when not treated right away. Maintenance of your vision is dependent on vision examinations, and be aware that evolving new eye care technology benefits your ophthalmologist and you. So you must keep regular appointments and inform your ophthalmologist about any unusual changes you are experiencing in your vision.
What's In A Name?
It is in your best interest to choose an eye care professional who is trained to offer you effective vision eye care. That's so because there are two main types of eye professionals who care for your eyes. Ophthalmologists are physicians who offer you complete eye care services while optometrists are medical professionals whose specialty allows them to issue prescriptions for eyeglasses and contact lens and to offer regular vision care. They are not physicians.
Neither of those two categories should be confused with the services of an optician. Opticians are not eye doctors nor do they give eye exams. They only fill the contact lenses or eyeglasses prescription given to you by your eye doctor. They also take care of adjusting and repairing glasses and associated other ancillary fittings.
Ophthalmologists Are Full Eye Care Licensed Physicians
So your ophthalmologist is the physician to use for a broad scope of vision services that include eye exams and for medical eye care concerning conditions such as surgical eye care, glaucoma, trauma, cataracts and for vision improvement and other disease-related eye problems. Those diseases might be diabetes with an emphasis upon your eye's retina, arthritis as well as other diseases.
New Ophthalmology Technology
Advanced technology for eye care diagnosis and eye care treatment is helping ophthalmologists to diagnose and check on your eye conditions. One such test is called Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). This test allows viewing of detailed images of your eye, which renders accurate diagnoses for literally most common ocular diseases.
How Optical Coherence Tomography Works
This test uses harmless infrared light waves that capture images of your eye's retina. A great feature of OCT is that it allows your doctor to view each layer of the retina to take precise measurements. The feature gives your doctor the capability of diagnosing and monitoring the response to treatment as well. OCT is a wonderful state-of-the-art technology that means a world of good to you when you are suffering from the dreaded glaucoma disease. It's beneficial to your ophthalmologist when monitoring treatment of glaucoma and other related retinal diseases.
OCT is a safe and quite harmless technology to your eye. Check with your ophthalmology clinic when you next visit for an appointment. OCT may well be the technology awaiting your next glaucoma vision and treatment care visit.