Study Shows Importance of Regular Eye Exams

Annual eye examinations are important regardless of your age or health. Your ophthalmologist or eye doctor, does much more than simply evaluate your eyes for prescription glasses and contacts. Your eye doctor will examine you for symptoms of common eye disease, evaluate how your eyes work together as a team and use your eyes as indicators of your overall health. In many cases, ophthalmologists are the first doctors to detect chronic, systemic diseases such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

For those of us here in San Diego, where the sun is more evident, we have additional incentive to have regular eye examinations. Many of us spend more time outside than do our friends in other parts of the country because of the great weather and are exposed to greater amounts of potentially harmful UVA and UVB rays. The eye care professionals at The Eye Center of La Jolla treat a significant amount of patients that experience some sort of eye damage due to the sun every year. Left undiagnosed and untreated these conditions could worsen and seriously threaten the health of your eyes.

A recent study, involving more than 10,000 preschoolers, indicates that nearly one-third of these children showed some sort of refractive errors in their vision. Looking for a refractive error is a big part of what ophthalmologists look for during their annual examination. Typically, these refractive errors can be treated with prescription eye wear. Left untreated, these refraction errors may impede the developmental learning of the child. Blurry vision may make reading more difficult causing eye strain and headache. It is important for children to have the proper and effective vision in learning shapes and other important factors during their earliest years of learning and development. Another important findings of this study indicates that one-in-five of these students were farsighted, meaning they frequently experienced challenges in their ability to see objects clearly that were relatively close to the eyes. This can make learning to read very difficult.

This and other studies confirm importance of taking care the eyes of your children, by having regular eye examinations. Having an annual, professional examination of your eyes can improve the lives of yourself and that of your children. In addition to corrective eye wear, ophthalmologists can identify and treat eye disease, many of which show no outward symptoms until it is too late. In most cases, these can be identified early and treated by trained eye care professionals long before any permanment damage has been done. We invite you to come meet Dr. Alborzian and start having your regular eye examinations beginning this year.