Because the effects are not permanent, CRT lenses are ideal for patients that need great vision without daytime correction, but are still growing and having changes to their eyeglass prescription.  While there are no age restrictions for CRT wear, the best candidates for successful CRT use are those that are less nearsighted than -6.00 diopters and with less than -1.75 diopters of astigmatism.  Those patient unable to have refractive surgery (especially because of thin corneas) are also great potential CRT patients.  CRT generally does not work with in those patients with keratoconus or those with post-surgical corneal ectasia.  Children, because their eyes are still changing, tend to do quite well with CRT, and can use Paragon CRT lenses instead of glasses and daytime contact lens wear.  With the dry climate of Colorado, many adults unable to tolerate contact lenses do excellent with CRT.  CRT is fun and easy!

Fitting the lenses involves first taking a careful measurement of the curves of the fronts of the patient’s eyes.  Using their current glasses prescription and knowing the curves of the corneas, our eye doctors will have lenses made that will flatten the corneas by the same amount of the glasses prescription.  The lenses are custom made for each patient, and when they arrive at our practice, a final contact lens fit is confirmed before the patient is sent home with the CRT lenses.  The lenses are worn at night, and our optometrists will see the patient back to check that they are working optimally.  Sometimes, adjustments need to be made the initial lens parameters.  Once a satisfactory fit and great vision is achieved, the patient continues wearing the lenses only at night while asleep.  Great vision during the day is just that easy!

Dr. Brian Abert, O.D., FAAO is certified by Paragon CRT to fit CRT lenses for patients of all ages.  Call Vista Eye Care today at (303) 450-2020 to schedule your child’s CRT fitting, or come in and speak with Dr. Abert about using CRT to help your vision reach its potential.

Dry eye affects many people in Colorado. “Dry, irritated eyes are probably one of the biggest complaints that patients mention,” says Dr. Brian Abert, O.D., FAAO. “We like to identify our dry eye patients early in the dry seasons and help them alleviate their symptoms.” Dry eyes can occur because of many factors, though the dry winter air certainly doesn’t help. Dry eyes can be caused by age (older folks tend to be more likely to get dryness), gender (women tend to have dryer eyes), history of corneal refractive surgery (including LASIK and PRK), certain systemic medications (such as anti-histamines), certain systemic disease (such as some forms of arthritis), and exposure to air currents (including indoor heating and cooling systems and being outdoors in general). The cornea is the most sensitive part of the human body and even a small amount of dryness may not be tolerated. Our doctors will investigate the cause of the dryness and work to treat not just the symptoms, but the cause. Wrap-around sunglasses are great for preventing winds from bothering the tear layer and there is an entire arsenal of excellent rewetting drops to help restore moisture to the ocular surface. If the symptoms are severe enough, prescription medications may be utilized to help reduce inflammation and get the dry eyes back to a moist, comfortable baseline. In addition, punctal plugs allow our doctors to plug-up the natural drains in the lids, keeping more tears present in the eyes for a longer period of time. This is often an easy option for patients to get their eyes comfortable.

Allergies and Colorado seem to go together whether we like it or not. Though Spring and Fall are often associated with pollen and hayfever, Winter brings a whole new allergy problem: heating systems are fired up and circulate air through ductwork that is loaded with dust and pollen that has collected there all the rest of the year. Every time you enter a store you are blasted with air, and at home our furnaces circulate air loaded with allergens. Even though flowers and weeds are nowhere to be seen, allergies can be quite strong for some patients living in Thornton, Brighton, Westminster, and Northglenn. Itchy, irritated eyes are common in the North Denver area. Red eyes, pink eyes, bloodshot eyes, they all suggest some sort of chronic irritation. Often times we can prescribe good anti-allergy eye drops that can be used topically. These will help keep the allergic reaction under control for the duration of your particular allergy season. If the allergies and inflammation are bad enough, our doctors may also recommend topical steroid drops to help calm the eyes more quickly.

There’s an awful lot of sunlight in Colorado, and Winter is no exception. Winter presents a challenge to eye protection because light bounces off snow, reflecting UV rays from the ground on up. We recommend good sun protection for all our patients when outdoors, especially in those patients that spend considerable time outside. Ultraviolet light exposure is the driving force behind cataracts, macular degeneration, and some skin cancers. The first step to preventing these diseases is to keep that part of the spectrum out of our eyes. Wearing good UVA and UVB blocking sunwear is crucial when living at altitude as we do in Colorado. We get far more ultraviolet exposure here than those folks living at sea level, and we have to be careful about protecting our eyes! Wrap-style sunwear is designed to prevent any light leaking around the edges of the frame. Besides keeping your eyes comfortable in the bright light, UV light reflected off the snow is keep out of your eyes.

Our doctors recommend yearly eye and vision exams to investigate problems such as dryness, allergies, and other ocular diseases. Please contact our office to schedule your yearly exam!

Figure 1. This demonstrates a generalized anatomy of a human eye.

Remember that annoying air-puff test you received at your last eye exam?  You may have heard that the air-puff test “looks for glaucoma,” but what does that really mean?  How does a person know that they have glaucoma and what does it mean if you do?  Can one prevent glaucoma?  This article is going to talk about all of these things, and shed some light on a potentially visually devastating eye disease.  However, before we understand why an eye is said to have glaucoma, we have to understand the cause of glaucoma itself.

Figure 2. Because the amount of fluid being created at the back of the eye is equal to the amount of fluid draining at the front of the eye, this eye is considered healthy.

Just as the body has a blood pressure, the eyes have an eye pressure.  This pressure, called the intraocular pressure, is thought to be related to the cause of glaucoma.  Depending on the type of glaucoma, the intraocular pressure may be high or low.  Fluid is created by the ciliary body behind the iris (See Figure 1).  This fluid is then drained through the pupil, and out through the anterior chamber drainage angle.  When the system works as it should, the amount of fluid created at the back of the eye equals the amount drained through the front of the eye (See Figure 2).  If there is an imbalance in this system, intraocular pressure rises and that increased pressure may cause permanent damage to the eye (See Figure 3).

Figure 3. This images depicts an eye with more fluid production occuring at the ciliary body than is draining at the anterior chamber drainage angle. The result will be increased intraocular pressure and possible glaucoma.

In angle-closure glaucoma, the anterior chamber drainage angle is sealed shut.  Because fluid is still being created at the back of the eye, but not draining at a similar rate at the front of the eye, the overall pressure goes up –sometimes dramatically.  Angle-closure glaucoma is less common than primary open angle glaucoma (glaucoma where the angle is open to drainage), though it is more frequently associated with pronounced symptoms.  Patients with angle-closure glaucoma may report red eyes, immobile pupils, blurred vision, haloes around lights, and generalized (sometimes quite severe) eye pain.  Angle closure glaucoma is considered an ocular emergency and the eye pressure needs to be lowered very quickly, often by a combination of oral and topical medications –and sometimes by emergency surgical procedures.

Figure 4. The optic nervehead is the structure viewed by ophthalmoscopy to determine if glaucomatous damage might be present. A. shows a normal optic nervehead. B. shows some suspicion for early glaucoma. C. shows end-stage glaucoma with very pronounced changes.

Primary open angle glaucoma is the more common type of glaucoma.  In its earliest stages, primary open angle glaucoma frequently carries with it no symptoms for patients to mention. In primary open angle glaucoma, the anterior chamber drainage angle is open.  But while the angle is technically open, on a microscopic level, the tiny openings in the tissue of the angle close and prevent fluid from exiting the eye.  The result is an angle that is open, but one that doesn’t drain fluid very well.  The eye pressure goes up, and with that rising pressure, the damage associated with glaucoma occurs.

In all types of glaucoma, the damage to the eye results in a loss of the side vision.  In angle closure glaucoma, this damage can happen very quickly (hence the need to be diagnosed and treated immediately if angle closure is suspected) though in primary open angle glaucoma, the damage is slow, building up over years and decades.  The physical changes to the eye include damage to the peripheral retina (the part of the retina that perceives peripheral vision).  Because the retina is transparent, this loss is difficult to clinically visualize, though the damage to the retina includes a change in the appearance of the optic nerve at the very back of the eye (See Figure 4).  The optic nerve changes shape in glaucoma, hinting at the damage to the rest of the retina.  It is interesting to note that not all patients with glaucoma have high eye pressures.  Intraocular pressures can be high or low and a patient can still be diagnosed with glaucoma.  Glaucoma historically tends to be associated with high eye pressures, though sometimes patients will have a high eye pressure but no damage to the eye.  These patients are typically watched closely and labeled ocular hypertensive.  No matter what a patient’s eye pressure was at the time of diagnosis there is only one way to treat glaucoma, and that is to lower the intraocular pressures.

Lowering the intraocular pressure can be accomplished with topical medications.  Some medications act to decrease the amount of fluid being produced by the ciliary body, while others act to increase the eye’s ability to drain fluid.  Some patients are prescribed a combination of medications to achieve both effects.  Surgery can be used to increase the drainage of the eye as well, with trabeculectomy creates an opening in the outer layers of the eyes to help drain fluid, and drainage implants can be used to help relieve the eye of its increased pressure.  Laser surgeries such as a selective laser trabeculoplasty can help relax the tissue in the anterior chamber drainage angle, allowing fluid to pass through it more easily.  Topical eye medications are the easiest and the least invasive of these choices, and are often an excellent option for the first line of glaucoma treatment.

Detecting glaucoma involves looking at a combination of things, and diagnosing the disease isn’t always as clear cut as one might like.  Intraocular pressure can be measured with non-contact tonometry (or as our patients know it, the “air-puff test”), or with Goldmann applanation tonometry which is slightly more accurate and used in glaucoma management because of its accuracy as compared to the air-puff test.  Every routine eye exam at Vista Eye Care measures the patient’s intraocular pressures.  Every eye exam also involves care assessment of the optic nerve head by means of ophthalmoscopy –visualizing the back of the eye through the biomicroscope.  A dialogue between the doctor and patient will help determine if there is a family history of glaucoma.  A side vision screening is also performed at each comprehensive eye and vision exam.  If anything looks funny during the eye exam, further testing may be warranted.

If an annual eye check-up finds high pressures, a strong family history, side vision problems, or suspicious optic nerveheads, our doctors may request that the patient return for a glaucoma workup.  This work-up will go a bit more in depth than the comprehensive exam, looking specifically for evidence of glaucoma in the patient’s eyes.  The intraocular pressures are measured carefully and the anterior chamber drainage angle is inspected with a specially-mirrored contact lens (called a goniscope) to assess the eye’s ability to drain fluid (and thus to determine if the glaucoma is open or closed-angle).  The side vision is measured with an automated visual field test.  This test takes about five minutes per eye and very carefully and systemically maps out the sensitivity of the patient’s side vision.  If results from these tests suggest glaucomatous changes and are repeatable, and the optometrist has reason enough to diagnose a patient, treatment is initiated.  While a patient is being treated, they are seen back periodically to have their eye pressures and side vision re-measured.  If necessary, we will have patients seen by an eye surgeon for advanced diagnostics (including retinal scans) and possible surgical treatment for those patients with an intolerance to anti-glaucoma medications or in those patients where the drops are not having a dramatic enough pressure reduction effect.

Even if glaucoma is detectable with regular eye care, and even if it is treatable, it would sure be nice not to have to get in the first place though, right?  Glaucoma is a unique disease in that it is largely not preventable.  Genetics and overall systemic health play a larger role than a patient’s nutrition, for example.  That said, patients with health problems, such as diabetes, tend to have more serious cases of glaucoma than those without systemic disease.  Certain types of glaucoma can be caused by other diseases such as diabetes, uveitis, or use of corticosteroids.

The best method of keeping glaucoma from affecting your eyes is to have regular eye care to look for it.  Dr. Brian Abert, O.D., FAAO, and Dr. Deanna Pedroza, O.D., take great pride in providing their patients thorough eye examinations that look for the early signs of glaucoma.  Be sure to discuss your family history with your doctor, and be sure to ask any questions you may have regarding your own ocular health.  Keeping your eyes healthy is our goal, and sometimes that process starts with a little puff of air.

Dr. Abert and Dr. Pedroza both like to fit their patients with CooperVision’s Biofinity lens.  This lens material (comfilcon A 48%) is available in spherical, toric, and multifocal designs.  This means that most of our patients are able to find their refractive error correction available in this brand.  Biofinity is among the healthiest class of contact lenses, known as silicone hydrogel.  When our optometrists talk about health, they are referring to the amount of oxygen that can permeate through the lens.  The cornea (the clear part of the eye) gets its oxygen right from the atmosphere, so in those patients wearing a contact lens the oxygen either needs to enter the cornea through the tear layer or it needs to diffuse directly through the lens itself.  It is particularly important that a contact lens fit is done so that the lens is allowed to float freely in the tear layer –this is what promotes the exchange of oxygen to the tear layer.

Biofinity is a monthly lens, meaning that the lenses are disposable and should be thrown out after 30 days of wear.  It is best to remove these lenses before sleeping in order to prevent unwanted comfort issues and eye infections.  No contact lens should be worn when in hot tubs or swimming.

Finding a comfortable contact lens is a big issue here in Colorado!  Our air is dry, cold (this time of year!), and can occasionally be quiet windy.  Moving in and out of air conditioning or heating can contribute to dryness.  A contact lens sits within the tear layer of the eye and some contact lenses can contribute to dry eye symptoms.  In addition, the wrong contact lens can contribute to other problems such as Computer Vision Syndrome.  Biofinity is made from an excellent material that performs fantastically in the Colorado’s climate.

If you are currently in an older lens design, we encourage you to consider trying a healthy contact lens such as Biofinity.  Our doctors are happy to let you try a pair of Biofinity’s for a week or two to see if you like them as part of our contact lens fit.  We’re not happy until you’re happy!  Call us today to schedule your yearly comprehensive eye and vision exam and your contact lens exam!

Flex dollars can apply to any spectacles including progressive lenses, occupational (computer glasses) lenses, sports glasses, sunglasses, swim goggles, or just regular ophthalmic glasses.   Our optical department prides itself on offering all the latest lens styles, frame styles, and lens coatings.  Our optical manager is constantly ordering new and exciting frame lines to keep you seeing and looking great.  Flex Dollars can also be used for contact lens purchases including distance contacts, monovision, multifocal (“bifocal contacts”), or colored contact lenses.  Flex dollars can also be used towards eyeglasses exams, contact lens exams, or diabetic eye check-ups.

Dr. Brian Abert, O.D., FAAO and Dr. Deanna Pedroza, O.D. founded Vista Eye Care in 2010 to offer Thornton, Brighton, and Westminster, Colorado patients easy access to caring, personal eye care.  Our optometrists believe in getting to know their patients, and gaining their trust through patient education, friendly service, and superior patient care.  We take great pride in providing efficient, effective eye care for you and your family.  We see patients of all ages from their first InfantSEE eye exam at 6 months on up!

While utilizing your insurance benefits to update your look and your vision, you can also catch up on your healthcare.  Our eye doctors recommend yearly eye exams to monitor the health of the eyes and to keep up with vision changes.  For those patients without insurance, we offer Care Credit for our exams and materials purchases.  Care Credit allows you to make payments on healthcare purchases, meaning you don’t have to pay up front for the full cost of your materials.  You don’t have to wait until New Year’s to make a resolution to stay healthy!

Schedule your yearly eye and vision check-up with our office today, and don’t let your insurance benefits and Flex Dollars go to waste!

These devices, known as 'lens bars,' allow our optometrists to assess your child's vision for quick, accurate determination of their refractive error.

Parents often ask when they should take their child in for their first eye exam.  “Infants make excellent patients,” says Dr. Abert.  “They typically hold still for the exams, and are highly cooperative.  Getting an examination done early in life is crucial to assuring that the child’s vision can develop normally.”  At Vista Eye Care,  our doctors like to see children for their InfantSEE examination and then again before they start Kindergarten.  The goal of these early-life exams is to assure that the child’s visual system is in a good position to develop the way it should.  Too often, amblyopia (“lazy eye”) develops in kids that have untreated eye and vision disorders.  In fact, the prevalence of amblyopia is said to be as high as 4% of the population.  This translates to about one child in each classroom.  That number is far too high for a disease that is easily diagnosed and treated.

Amblyopia is often due to a refractive imbalance (“anisometropia”) in the eyes, meaning one eye has a much higher, or different, glasses prescription than the other.  This can usually be controlled with either glasses or contact lenses to assure that your child has a clear retinal image, and the eyes and vision processing centers of the brain develop normally.  Sometimes, our doctors may prescribe a routine of eye patching to help strengthen the vision processing in the weaker eye.  While patching can increase the potential visual acuity (i.e. 20/20, 20/50, etc.) of a patient, it will not change their glasses prescription, and those patients who are patching are still required to wear their glasses.  In patients that have untreated amblyopia, there often is no way to recover the lack of vision that occurs in amblyopic patients.  After ages 10-12 the vision system is essentially done developing, and any lack of visual acuity caused by amblyopia is typically not fully treatable.  Amblyopia is often cited as being one of the most common permanent, preventable forms of vision loss.

When your child is older, we can use their input as to what they can and cannot see. Children as young as two can point to the symbols they see on the card.

So what goes on during an InfantSEE examination?  Our eye doctors start with a thorough case history.  Were there any pregnancy complications?  Has the child suffered any illnesses in life?  Is there any family history of eye disease such as eye cancers, eye turns (strabismus), or amblyopia?  Are there any medical problems that run in the family?  The InfantSEE examination is typically performed while the child sits on a parent’s lap.  Visual acuity, ocular motility (assessing the extraocular muscle movements), ocular alignment (looking for an eye turn), and pupils are assessed.  The refractive status of the eyes is assessed using retinoscopy (see the title illustration of lens bars).  This technique allows our eye doctors to determine your child’s nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism without he child’s input.  We typically put a movie on for the child to watch while we assess their eyes.  Ocular health is assessed using a magnifying lens and an ophthalmoscope.  This allows our optometrists to determine if there are congenital cataracts, concerns for glaucoma, intraocular tumors, blood vessel abnormalities, optic nerve abnormalities, or other ocular disease that occur early in life. Some minor anomalies, such as a small congenital cataract, may just be monitored, while others require specialized medical attention to ensure that the child is in a good position to have normal sensory development to occur.

Vision is a remarkably important sense.  Learning as we all know it is very challenging in patients that have vision impairment.  Identifying any vision problems early in life is key to ensuring a lifetime of healthy vision and learning.  Contact our office today at (303) 450-2020 to schedule your child’s first eye health and vision examination!

Dr. Abert and Dr. Pedroza pose at the John F. Kennedy Library with Downtown Boston, MA across the bay

The annual American Academy of Optometry meeting was held in Boston, Massachusetts in early October of 2011.  Both founding eye doctors of Vista Eye Care, Drs. Abert and Pedroza, attended the meeting.  The annual meeting is a chance for our optometrists to earn their continuing education credit and to catch up on the latest trends and research in the eye care community.  Like many professions, eye care is always changing.  New technologies, pharmaceuticals, and disease research are always coming into existence to aid our doctors in treating our patients, and this meeting was a great opportunity for our doctors to learn what’s new in eye care.

Dr. Abert and Dr. Pedroza try to take a variety of classes during Academy.  Among the classes they attended this year:

• Clinical Management of Retinal Disease
• Managing Accommodative and Vergence Dysfunction
• Vision and Balance
• Management Options for the Diplopic Patient
• Anterior Segment Grand Rounds
• Ocular Allergies
• Important Mental Health Conditions

Vista Eye Care is Thornton, Colorado’s family eye care practice.  Our doctors pride themselves in keeping up with the latest treatment methodologies.  We provide yearly comprehensive eye and vision exams (“glasses eye exams”), contact lens exams (including keratoconus, post-surgical ectasia, and hard-to-fit corneas), pediatric exams (we are volunteer InfantSEE providers offering no-cost exams for 6-12 month olds), ocular disease management (including diabetic eye exams and glaucoma diagnosis and treatment), LASIK and PRK co-management, and a complete optical department with a fantastic variety of sunglasses, ophthalmic glasses, clip-on sunglasses, accessories, and sports glasses.

Please contact tour office today at (303) 450-2020 to schedule check-ups for your family!

Our eye doctors can help you achieve 20/20 vision with great eye correction, and keep it there with regular eye check-ups.

At Vista Eye Care in Thornton, Colorado, our eye doctors use the letter chart to determine a patient’s entering visual acuity (what their vision is when they first arrive for their eye appointment), visual acuity with their glasses or contacts, visual acuity in the context of ocular disease such as cataracts, and visual acuity following refractive surgery such as LASIK or PRK.  Visual acuity is the measurement of the overall image fineness that the eye can perceive.  While having good visual acuity is important, there are other components of vision that reading a letter chart does not assess.  For example, a patient may have color deficiency, high hyperopia, poor peripheral vision, poor focusing, poor depth perception, poor eye movement, or even poor eye health and still read 20/20 on the letter chart.  Since many school screenings rely almost entirely on visual acuity (reading a letter chart) to assess eye functionality, the screenings commonly miss many diagnoses that could be better identified at an actual eye and vision exam.

A 20/20-sized letter is a letter that a person with “normal” vision can distinguish at a distance of 20 feet.  A larger letter such as a 20/25 letter, can be distinguished by a person with 20/20 vision at 25 feet (because their vision is better than the person with 20/25 vision), though a person with 20/25 vision must view the letter at 20 feet (since their vision is not as good, they have to move 5 feet closer to see the letter).  Confusing?  It can be.  Now, what about a person with 20/15 vision?  That works the opposite way: a person with 20/15 vision can read a 20/20-sized letter at 20 feet, while someone with 20/20 vision (the poorer acuity in this case) must move up to 15 feet to see the letter.

Now, as our patients well know, our exam room are not 20 feet long, so how are we testing vision at 20 feet?  The answer is that our cutting-edge computer-based visual acuity system is designed to produce digital letters that simulate the light seen if viewing it from 20 feet away.  The nice thing about our visual acuity testing is that it allows us to switch between letters for adults, symbols for kids, and even movie clips for very young children.  And unlike printed letter charts, Drs. Abert and Pedroza can mix the letters up in the middle of an exam to eliminate the chances of our patients memorizing the chart (not that you’d do that on purpose!).

After their yearly eye exam, our patients often ask “what is my vision, doc?”  If they are a moderately nearsighted person, for example, they may have terrible distance vision without their glasses or contact lenses.  20/400 vision is not uncommon in an uncorrected patient’s eyes, and while that is certainly not “good” vision, that measurement really doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of their eyes.  From a health perspective, we need to make sure that the vision is 20/20 (“normal”) when the eye’s refractive error (nearsightedness, farsightedness, presbyopia, or astigmatism) is corrected.  A 20/400 eye can’t do much without glasses, though if an eye is not 20/20 with glasses, contact lenses, or after a refractive surgery such as LASIK, there must be a reason to explain why that vision is poor.  Possible explanations are cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, amblyopia, or macular degeneration.

We recommend that all our patients be seen yearly for good eye health and vision.  Call our Thornton, Colorado optometry office today to schedule exams for you and your family!

Meet Bill, Vista Eye Care's Professional Swimmer

You may notice that Bill is wearing sunglasses.  Sunglasses are important to protect the retinas from the harmful component of sunlight known as ultraviolet light.  To prevent macular degeneration and cataracts, we recommend that all our patients wear sunglasses when outdoors.  This holds especially true because the Denver area is located at high altitude.  With less atmosphere to filter out the harmful rays of sunshine, eyes are more vulnerable to ultraviolet damage.  Proper nutrition and sun protection are key to keeping your eyes healthy.

In addition to keeping his eyes protected from sunlight, Bill knows not to swim with his contact lenses.  Not only are contact lenses more likely to get lost in the water, harmful infections can occur if microbes find their way into contacts.  Since Bill has prescription sunglasses, this is not a problem, though he knows that he can easily get prescription swim goggles from our office to give him excellent clarity while he is swimming.

We recommend yearly eye and vision exams for all our patients (and aquatic birds).  Please contact us today to schedule your yearly eye check-up, and good luck Bill!

Like it or not, many of our jobs now require the use of a computer.

You may already be familiar with computer vision syndrome.  Focusing problems, eyestrain, headaches, eye ache, tired eyes, burning eyes, dry eyes, watery eyes, and neck ache are all symptoms that are linked to CVS.  The confusing aspect of computer vision syndrome symptoms is that there are multiple factors that lead to discomfort.

When a person is busy reading or using the computer screen, their attention is preserved by lessening the eye’s blink rate.  By not blinking as often, the eyes are more prone to dryness.  Dry eyes are frequently connected to computer use because of this.  The solution is usually a pretty easy one: keeping the tears thickened with a good artificial tear.  Dr. Abert likes Systane Ultra, though other excellent brands include Refresh Tears and Optive.  These artificial tears are available in any pharmacy.  By increasing the viscosity of the tears, we can help keep the tears where they belong –on the front of your eyes between these blinks.  Now, even though your blink rate at the computer may be less frequent, the tears will remain adhered to the front of your eyes.  Eyes can also be dry because of the location of your computer screen.  It is recommended that your computer screen be located slightly below your line of sight so that your eyes don’t need to be opened excessively wide to comfortably view it.  Good positioning of the screen can also help improve neck posture.

Besides dryness, the fact that you’re looking at a computer screen means that you are doing near work.  For those patients with a small amount of nearsightedness, it might be most comfortable to view the screen without their distance spectacle correction on.  For those patients wearing contact lenses, or those that have had refractive surgery (PRK or LASIK), supplemental near power is an excellent way to reduce eye strain.  For the human eye to view near objects such as print-outs or computer screen images, the ciliary muscle located just behind your iris has to squeeze down on your crystalline lens.  This process, known as accommodation, allows the eye to shift its focal point toward you, keeping near objects clear and readable.  This is process, when affected by age, is called presbyopia.  This is usually something that is easy for the eye to do –in the short term.  If the eye has to remain focused on a computer screen for excessively long periods of time (say, for over a half hour), eye fatigue typically results.  It is far easier on your eyes to make the lens in a pair of computer glasses do that focusing for you.  The spectacle lens can focus your screen for you, leaving your eyes relaxed.  What does this mean for you?  Comfortable vision throughout the day and no more end of the day eye tiredness.  Our optical department is ready to help you achieve great vision during your workday.

Computer glasses can be made in a variety of forms including occupational lenses, flat-top bifocals, and single vision.  For folks spending more than an hour per day at a computer, we generally recommend occupational lenses such as Shamir’s Office lens.  The Office lens allows for excellent computer vision, as well as extra power at the bottom of the lens for reading even closer material such as paperwork, or for looking down at your desk.  The Office lens is easy to use, and you’ll be amazed how comfortable your eyes can be when they are not being unnecessarily strained.  Flat-top bifocals are a good option as well.  We typicall set the top part (largest part) of the lens for the distance of the computer screen, and provide a good reading power in the bifocal segment at the bottom of the lens.

Good computer vision starts with a good eye exam, and our annual comprehensive eye and vision examinations are thorough and will address your unique visual needs based on your job and hobbies.  Please call us today to schedule your yearly eye exam.