Understanding the Complete Eye Exam

A complete eye exam is the full visit: your vision, your eye health and how your two eyes work as a team. At our office in Pinellas Plaza, Dr. James Russell checks all three.

Nothing about it hurts.

People often ask us why they need one if their glasses still seem fine. The answer is that glaucoma, early cataracts and retina changes rarely announce themselves. You find them by looking.

Who you’ll see at a complete eye exam

Three kinds of eye professionals share the work, and the names are easy to mix up.

• Optometrist (OD): Dr. Russell is one. An optometrist examines your eyes, writes prescriptions and diagnoses and treats many eye conditions.

  Optometrists don’t do surgery.

• Ophthalmologist (MD or DO): a medical doctor who also does eye surgery. If you need cataract surgery, for example, we refer you to one.

• Optician: our opticians don’t give exams. They fit your frames, measure your lenses and adjust your glasses after the lab makes them.

Routine, follow-up or urgent?

Most visits are routine: a yearly check when your eyes feel normal. A follow-up visit tracks something we already know about, like diabetes or macular degeneration.

An urgent visit is for a sudden change, such as an injury, a red painful eye or a burst of new floaters. Call us the same day for those.

The 12 things a complete eye exam checks

Here is what we look at, in roughly the order it happens.

1. Visual acuity: reading the letter chart, one eye at a time.
2. Visual fields: your side vision, to find any blind spots.
3. Eye movement and alignment: whether your eyes track together.
4. Conjunctiva: the clear skin over the white of the eye and inside the lids.
5. Ocular adnexa: the lids, lashes and tear ducts around the eye.
6. Pupils and iris: how your pupils react to light.
7. Eye pressure: a quick reading that helps screen for glaucoma.

Then Dr. Russell uses the slit lamp, a microscope with a thin bright beam, to look closer.

8. Cornea: the clear front window of the eye.
9. Anterior chamber: the fluid space behind the cornea.
10. Lens: where cataracts form.
11. Optic nerve: the cable from eye to brain, checked for glaucoma damage.
12. Retina: the back wall of the eye. Our digital retinal scan saves a picture of it, so next year we can compare.

Getting ready for your visit

Bring your current glasses and contacts, any old prescriptions and a list of your medicines and supplements. Your insurance card helps too. Our page on what to bring to your eye exam has the full list.

If your pupils are dilated, the world looks bright and close-up reading gets blurry for a few hours. Bring sunglasses.

Some patients like to have someone drive them home. Our page on dilated eye exams explains the drops.

After the exam

Dr. Russell goes over what he found in plain words. If you need new glasses, our opticians help you pick frames right after, and our lab can make many pairs in about an hour.

How often to come in

For most adults, every one to two years. After 60, or with diabetes or a family history of glaucoma, once a year is safer. Our guide to senior eye exam frequency breaks it down by age.

Ready to come in? Book your eye exam or call (352) 399-5412. If you have diabetes, ask about a diabetic eye exam when you book.