If you have never been to a specialist for an eye exam or you never visited the ophthalmologist before, then you may be concerned about going to get an examination. You might have some questions or be unsure of what your visit will be like. You may be apprehensive about the tests that will be administered and whether you will be uncomfortable or not.
Here, we’ll look at your typical eye exam and walk you through the process. Hopefully, that should help to answer some questions you may have and relieve your stress about the visit.
First Impressions
Eye doctors, like all medical professionals, are trained to be good with patients. They are taught to be friendly and caring and to take their time so that the patient is examined thoroughly. When you visit an ophthalmologist in Singapore, your doctor will likely try to make you feel at ease.
The doctor will ask you a few questions to determine what your condition is and what is bothering you. Even though you may not know the name for your medical problem, your doctor can figure it to for you and give you some answers about treatment, whether it can be cured, and what you can expect in the future.
What Your Ophthalmologist Is Looking For
Your eye doctor will ask you a few questions, getting to know your situation better. The specialist will not be trying to jump to conclusions or make any guesses but rather determine a diagnosis based on the facts presented. The doctor will use a series of questions to dig deeper into the problem, eliminating some medical diagnoses and narrowing down the list of possible problems to the reality.
The most common kinds of eye problems that ophthalmologists in Singapore will see in their patients are the following:
- Eye pain
- Photophobia (light sensitivity)
- Double vision
- Redness in the eyes
- Suspected eye trauma
- Foreign objects in the eye
- Dimmed vision
- Eye floaters
One by one, your doctor will eliminate a lot of these and figure out what is really bothering you, even when you aren’t sure what is wrong with your eyes.
Your doctor will also try to eliminate less common medical condition related to the eye, such as central serous retinopathy or cataracts.
Checking Your Vision
The ophthalmologist will perform some simple eye tests to check your visual acuity. This simply means that they will want determine how well you see, if you can see things far away or close up, if you see details, if you can see well in different environments, and if your eyesight is fairly strong.
Your ophthalmologist may move on to more complex tests or ones involving sophisticated machinery to test your eyes in more detail. These tests help to eliminate options from the long list of possible eye problems and narrow down the choices to a few solid options.
If you have impaired vision, these tests help the doctor to determine how impaired it is. This can help your specialist to plan a course of action for you that caters to your specific needs. Perhaps you have decent vision but there is some risk of it worsening. Maybe you are developing early stage eye problems that need to be dealt with swiftly to ensure the problem can be prevented or reversed. These tests are essential to finding all of that out.
Creating a Plan
Once the doctor has the diagnosis, he will tell you what plan of action he has in mind for you. The problem you are suffering could be a more temporary one that calls for some eye drops and bed rest. Or it could be something more serious, and your ophthalmologist will be able to give you at least some indication of what is wrong and what problems the condition might cause.
After the initial visit, the doctor will develop a plan for you, and repeated visits might be necessary. Be sure to follow up with your doctor if your condition changes or worsens.
There is nothing to fear from an ophthalmologist visit, though. Your doctor will take good care of you and can help you with a variety of eye problems that are affecting your quality of life.
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