Explore our frequently asked questions below.
If you’re curious about eye health or optometry in general, take a look at our education-focused questions and answers as well.
How often you have an eye exam depends on a few factors like your age and health, but not all eye conditions have recognizable symptoms, so regular exams are critical even if you feel well.
We can make a recommendation for how often you should schedule appointments with us after your first visit, but if your eyes are healthy and you don’t have any concerns about your vision or well-being, you should be fine to use the general guidelines listed below.
- 2 – 5 years: The first exam should be at around 3 years of age, and the second prior to starting school.
- 6 – 18 years: Annual eye exams are recommended.
- 19 – 64 years: An exam every 1 to 2 years is recommended.
- 65+: Annual eye exams are recommended.
That being said, see us often as you need to. Regular eye exams are important, but there are other symptoms to look out for as well such as blurry vision, eye pain, floaters across your vision, flashes of light, redness, swelling around the eyes, sensitivity to light, and persistent dryness. Likewise, if you experience trouble with specific tasks like seeing in the dark or maintaining visual focus, you should make an appointment with us immediately.
Depending on your prescription, you could have your glasses the same day as your exam.
We have an on-site dispensing lab, which, if your prescription is simple enough for one of the basic sets of lenses we keep in stock, can allow us to set them in your frames on the same day or next day. If your exam is early enough in the day, we can even switch out the lenses in your existing frames in about an hour, so you aren’t without your glasses longer than necessary. Otherwise, your lenses may take a day or two to come in once they’ve been ordered.
If you require a more complex prescription or set of lenses, including bifocals or progressives, it may take anywhere from 10 to 14 days for them to arrive, but we can give you a better estimate when you order them based on recent shipping times.
So long as you’re wearing your glasses as advised by our licensed optometrist, they won’t cause any deterioration that wouldn’t otherwise occur. Some glasses are even designed to help slow worsening in your eyesight.
However, wearing your glasses for activities not recommended for your prescription (for example, wearing distance glasses to read up close) may cause eye strain, which can have consequences for your vision. We’ll explain when you should wear your glasses during your appointment.
You can book your child’s first eye exam as early as 6 months of age if you’re concerned for your child’s eye health, but around 3 years old is usually when we recommend a first eye exam. The first exam is always a fairly simple procedure since all of the vision tests for children that young are age appropriate.
If your child can’t read, we use symbols instead of letters. Most of the testing we do for young children requires very little input on their part. Instead, those early exams are focused on assessing the strength of the eye, eye muscle status, and eye health to ensure proper vision.
There are several symptoms that might mean your child has vision problems, including rubbing their eyes, squinting, turning or tilting their head, losing their place or using a finger to follow along when reading, moving their head or mouthing words while reading, headaches, red eyes, wandering eyes, and complaints of blurred vision.
It’s important to remember that many disorders have no symptoms. All children should have an eye examination around 3 years of age and regularly after than.
We do ask that you bring your eyeglasses with you to your eye examination. This allows us to check and compare your current prescription to see if there are any changes. Even if there aren’t, it’s good for us to quickly assess the glasses for scratches or defects, and to ensure everything fits properly.
We also ask that you bring your glasses to your contact lens assessments as sometimes the dyes used to assess your eyes can cause temporary staining in contact lenses.
If you are a contact lens wearer, we do ask that you wear or bring your contact lenses to your appointment. It allows us to assess the current fit and your level of vision while wearing them. Unlike some optometrists, we do not charge extra for this testing.
Disposable contact lenses come in a few variations, including daily, bi-weekly, and monthly lenses. Exactly how long they last varies depending on your eye health and tear chemistry as well as your lifestyle and environmental exposure. How often you wear your contact lenses and for how long also plays a factor.
We’ll assess your eye health and vision status with your contact lenses to ensure your schedule is working for you.
Technically, contact lenses can be made to fit patients of any age, but you’ll need to judge whether your child can manage their contact lenses well enough to prevent eye infections and other complications. You may need to help them by making sure that the lenses are cleaned properly, replaced regularly, inserted and removed safely, and not worn past the recommended time limit.
Most patients are perfectly capable of driving after their eye exam.
During the exam, we may use eye drops to dilate the eyes, which helps the doctor see different parts of the back of the eye. These drops can cause light sensitivity for a few hours after the examination, so we recommend that sunglasses be worn after the eye exam during daylight hours. For very light sensitive patients they may be more comfortable having someone drive them home after the eye examination although the sunglasses should suffice for most people. If you don’t want your eyes dilated, we can use an Optomap scan, which takes photos of the back of your eye.
Other drops that we might use could temporarily affect your focusing system. In that case, you may have to wear prescription lenses home to see well enough to drive (or have someone drive you home after your exam).
All the eye drops we use for exams should wear off entirely within 3 – 4 hours.
Yes, we do offer direct billing with several insurance providers. View the list of insurance providers we’ve recently billed.