Eye exams are important for maintaining healthy vision. They are a comprehensive evaluation of your vision and overall eye health. During the appointment, your optometrist will perform several tests to assess your vision, check for any eye diseases or abnormalities, and determine if you need corrective lenses. Here's a closer look at the tests you can expect during your eye exam.

Visual Acuity Test

This test is the most well-known part of an eye exam and involves reading letters from a chart. You will be asked to read progressively smaller letters on the chart while standing 20 feet away from it. This standardized chart is typically a Snellen eye chart, but your doctor may prefer a different one. The visual acuity test measures how sharp your vision is and helps diagnose refractive errors, like nearsightedness or farsightedness.

Conversely, you may be asked to take a visual acuity test by reading off a hand-held card or a video monitor.

Pupil Dilation Test

Your optometrist may also check whether your pupils are dilating properly by dimming the lights in the exam room and shining a pen light into your eyes. This test helps the doctor better view the inside of the eyes to detect any signs of injury, infection, disease, or abnormality within the eyes. Your doctor may also add drops to your eyes to further dilate your pupils, in which case the pupils usually remain dilated for several hours. You should plan to wear sunglasses when leaving your appointment.

Color Vision Test

This part of the eye exam checks whether you have any difficulty distinguishing between different colors. To do this, you'll be asked to identify numbers or symbols hidden within blocks of color. For example, you may look at an image filled with red dots and be asked to identify a number in the middle of the image composed of green dots. This test helps determine whether you have difficulty distinguishing between certain shades or hues, which could indicate color blindness or other vision issues.

An eye exam is essential to maintain good vision health and catch any potential issues early before they become serious problems. The tests performed during an eye exam help provide insight into how well your eyes function and reveal evidence of underlying health conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure that can affect more than just your vision health. If you haven't had an eye exam recently, now might be a good time to schedule one.

Reach out to a service like Eye Wares to learn more.