An eye exam isn’t just about checking your vision or picking out new glasses. It’s a comprehensive process that evaluates the overall health of your eyes and can help detect potential issues before they become serious.
Besides, there are several types of eye exams, each focusing on a different area of your visual health. The length of these exams varies depending on your age, visual needs, and overall health status.
As a general timeline:
- A routine eye exam can take around 30 minutes.
- A contact lens exam can take 45 to 60 minutes.
- A diabetic eye exam can take around 60 minutes.
- Any additional testing can take 20 to 60 minutes.
Taking the time out of your day to invest and care for your eyes is always worth the effort.
If it’s been a while since your last appointment or you’re unsure where to start, scheduling a routine eye exam is a great first step.
A Comprehensive Eye Exam: Why Everyone Benefits
The benefits of a routine eye exam extend beyond monitoring your vision or updating your prescription. It’s an opportunity for your optometrist to evaluate your eyes’ health for any potential concerns, like abnormal visual development in children, general health conditions like diabetes, or eye conditions like glaucoma or macular degeneration.
A standard eye exam lasts around 30 minutes but varies depending on a person’s age, vision needs, and medical history.
Children’s Eye Exams
A significant portion of a child’s learning is visual. Annual eye exams verify proper vision and eye development while identifying concerns (amblyopia or refractive errors), early for early intervention, and better results down the line.
A child’s eye exam can take around 30 minutes, depending on their age (they can have their first exam as early as 6 months old), health, and overall mood.
During this visit, your eye doctor will evaluate their pupil response, eye alignment, and focusing ability, especially if they’re too young to know their ABCs or recognize patterns.
Adult Eye Exams
After years of fluctuating vision as children and teenagers, most people’s vision stabilizes at around age 20.
Unless your optometrist recommends otherwise, adults 18 to 64 can get by with eye exams every two years. During these visits, we can address any changes in vision (like presbyopia) and detect concerns like dry eye or digital eye strain, which can worsen from lifestyle choices.
Senior Eye Exams
Similar to how vision fluctuates and eyes develop until young adulthood, growing older brings even more changes.
Therefore, seniors (65+), who are more susceptible to developing age-related eye conditions, like glaucoma, cataracts, or macular degeneration, should have an annual eye exam. Detecting these conditions can significantly alter your treatment outcomes.
A Contact Lens Exam: What to Expect
If you wear contact lenses or are considering switching from glasses, you’ll need a special type of appointment called a contact lens exam. Although glasses wearers can get by with an eye exam every two years, annual contact lens exams are a must, no matter your age.
Contact lenses sit directly on the eye’s surface, demanding greater maintenance, care, and monitoring than glasses. A contact lens exam resembles a standard eye exam but requires additional testing, including a lens fitting or training for new wearers, and a trial lens period.
An annual contact lens exam verifies that your lenses fit properly, your prescription is accurate, and your eyes remain healthy to continue sporting the contacts you love.
Between the lens fitting and the training, a contact lens exam can last anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes, depending on whether this is your first time wearing contacts or you’re renewing an existing prescription.
Diabetic Eye Exams: Why They’re Important
General health conditions can target more than one area of the body. Diabetes, for example, can significantly affect your eye health, causing complications like diabetic retinopathy or diabetic macular edema, which can lead to severe complications without proper intervention.
This is where diabetic eye exams come in.
People with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes should have an annual diabetic eye exam, even if they’re not experiencing any vision concerns. However, managing diabetes through medication and lifestyle changes can help reduce the risk of developing diabetic eye diseases.
This eye exam uses specialized eye drops to dilate the pupils (this can take up to 20 minutes), which helps capture detailed images (retinal photos and OCT imaging) of the eye’s internal structures (the retina, optic nerve, and blood vessels) to assess overall retinal health and spot early warning signs of complications.
Given the thorough nature of this appointment, a diabetic eye exam can take around an hour, especially if additional screenings, like a visual field test (for glaucoma), are involved.
When Do You Require Further Testing?
Sometimes during a routine eye exam, your optometrist may detect abnormalities or changes that require additional testing, such as:
- Fluctuations in your vision
- Structural irregularities within the eye
- Specific risk factors, such as family history or medical conditions like diabetes
- Signs of potential eye diseases such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, or diabetic retinopathy.
Often, these concerns may not present noticeable symptoms in their early stages, which is why a thorough assessment is necessary.
These additional tests might include:
- Visual field testing to assess your peripheral vision.
- Cycloplegic refraction to determine an accurate vision prescription.
- OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) scans for a closer look at the layers of your retina.
- Dilated fundus exams to examine the back of your eye more thoroughly.
Further testing can take an additional 20 minutes to over an hour. Although these tests take extra time, they offer invaluable insights into your eye health, guide effective treatment plans, and preserve your vision.
Safeguard Your Sight
No matter your age or lifestyle, eye exams are worth the time. At The Eye Gallery, we’re dedicated to providing comprehensive care tailored to your needs, whether it’s a routine checkup or advanced diagnostics.
If you haven’t booked your next eye exam yet, there’s no better time than now!
