A Guide to Understanding Your Eye Exam

Among the most common eye problems found in teenagers to adults and kids to elderly are nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. Typically, followed by the visual acuity test, eye testing process and questioning session eye exam in Colorado Springs and eye doctor in Colorado Springs prescribe you with required eyeglass to help performing your activities normally with corrected eyesight. You take the prescription to an optician who prepares your glass according to the specs prescribed by the ophthalmologist or optometrist.

Even though the prescription with the details of specification appears to be incomprehensive to you, however, by decoding the symbols and abbreviated terms you can effectively understand what the prescription says about your eye health condition and its weaknesses. Whether you are shortsighted or farsighted vision issue and its acuity point. The guidelines below can help you interpret your eye test report successfully.

A Guide to Understanding Your Eye Exam

What ‘OD’ and ‘OS’ Mean

The foremost factor of your prescription to understand is the meaning of OD and OS. They are acronym forms while OD stands for ‘oculus dexter’ (directs Right eye), and OS stands for ‘oculus sinister’ or left eye. Doctors are also using another term OU, which means ‘oculus uterque’ i.e., ‘both eyes’. While these are the traditional coding systems, many doctors these days used to write RE (right eye as well as LE (left eye). In the prescription, OD comes before OS since doctors involved in eye exam in Colorado Springs and eye doctor in Colorado Springs see patient’s right eye on their left as they face them.

The other abbreviations

Sphere denoted by ‘SPH’

SPH specifies the extent of lens power needed for correction of nearsighted or farsighted people. If you see (-) minus sign, this means you are shortsighted, having problem to view things far. Conversely, if it’s (+) sign, it would mean you are farsighted. You have problem to read small words of books or newspaper. I.e. nearer things.

Cylinder denoted by ‘CYL’

It indicates the extent of lens power needed for astigmatism. If nothing is mentioned here, you should understand that your astigmatism is too negligible to correct with an eyeglass.

Axis

Axis denotes the lens meridian. Axis is defined by numbering it from 1 to 180. Here, number corresponding to 90 indicates vertical meridian while number corresponding to 180 indicates horizontal meridian.

Important: Meridians of one’s eye are found by assuming a protector scale on the eye’s frontal surface.

Add

This denotes additional magnifying power to be applied to the lower part of a multifocal lens for correction of farsightedness. The number appears with ‘+’. In general, it should be the range between +0.75 to +3.00 D for both the eyes. For rectification of shortsightedness, it should be the reverse.

Difference of Single and Multi-focal eyeglass

One’s single vision correction need indicates lens power for improvement of your farsighted problem or address nearsighted issue but not both. On the other hand multi-focus or bifocal are meant for those who need correction support for nearness, farness and intermediate range vision.

What are Visual Acuity, Eyesight, and Vision?

Whereas the largest part of people often make mistake while distinguishing Visual Acuity, Eyesight and Vision, here is the details

• Visual acuity refers to the sharpness of your visual power. This is tested with standard Snellen eye chart by eye doctors during eye exam in Colorado Springs and eye doctor in Colorado Springs. Visual acuity is measured keeping the chart static while you sit at a distance and read the alphabets on it enabling the doctor to offer you necessary correction glass.

• Eyesight typically means one’s ability to see things or ‘sense of seeing’.

• Vision can indicate either of visual acuity or of eyesight.

Factors to Consider While Looking for the Right Ophthalmologist


Eyes play an important role in everyday life and thus are an essential part of one’s life. When it comes to their health, there are two types of eye specialists are available; optometrists and ophthalmologists. Optometrists can prescribe medication to treat various conditions but do not perform surgery while ophthalmologists also perform surgery for the complex eye disease. The right ophthalmologist can not only help in treating various eye conditions but can also guide with general eye care practices that reduce the risk of eye damage or vision condition. It therefore becomes important to find the right ophthalmologist for the right treatment and care.

Discussed below are some of the factors that can be considered to find the right ophthalmologist;

The recommendation can always be helpful because these are the first-hand experience from the people around. The best people to ask for the recommendation are friends and family for they always share the honest experience without any biasing. References from the family physician or the pediatrician should also be considered. The Internet is also another useful and helpful resource in today’s world of technology. References also help in finding out the specialists in case one has a complex condition of glaucoma, retina, or cornea.

The medical practitioners are professionally qualified in the field of their expertise and are also certified by the concerned authorities. The medical qualification, training institute and the certification of various medical practitioners are available on government and concerned hospital’s websites. It is therefore advised to always consider these factors while looking for the right ophthalmologist. Though the medical qualification is important but in complex cases where surgery is required, the ophthalmologist with experience of previous surgeries and fellowship with other experienced seniors is an added advantage.

When one visits the ophthalmologist, communication skills of the ophthalmologists play an important role because there are many questions that one needs to answer so that ophthalmologist understands the problem and suggest the best treatment. The question-answer session yields best results when the ophthalmologist develops an easy rapport with the patient making them comfortable instead of anxious about their condition. Also, patients need to feel like another human to the ophthalmologist rather than another case study.

In the world of extended human interactions, one can also check for the reviews from fellow patients. These are available on various survey portals and at the hospitals. These reviews are about the overall experience of the patients with the ophthalmologist; the general atmosphere of the hospital, how easy or difficult is it to fix an appointment, how much time does the ophthalmologist spend with the patients, the waiting time, and other such things.
Once an ophthalmologist is found, it is advised to check with the insurance company if that hospital and ophthalmologists is covered under their scheme or not.