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Category Archives: Eye treatment

pink eye treatment

All You Need To Know About Pink Eye

What is Pink Eye?

This is a common eye related problem where the eyelids and the covering of the white of your eye gets inflamed. Pink eye, called conjunctivitis in medical terms can affect anybody but school children, college and office goers, day workers and teachers are at higher risk as the condition is highly contagious. However the heartening part is, pink eye can be effectively and easily treated and if proper care is taken, can be avoided.
The inside of your eyelids called conjunctiva is transparent and contains blood vessels. These blood vessels dilate when an inflammation is triggered causing scary, pink eyes.

What causes pink eye?

  • Viral conjunctivitis: This is caused by a virus and highly contagious, but will subside within a few days. There is no need for medical treatment.
  • Bacterial conjunctivitis: This is caused by bacteria and can seriously damage your eye if you do not seek medical help. Look for the best eye care Houston and protect your eye!
  • Allergic conjunctivitis: Pollen, animal dander and dust can cause this kind of conjunctivitis.

Pink eye sometimes might be mistaken for an allergy, visit your eye doctor Houston if you experience any of the following symptoms.

Symptoms of pink eye

  • Your eye turns pink.
  • Eyes become watery and itchy if you are affected by viral conjunctivitis. One or both the eyes can be affected.
  • A sticky, greenish yellow fluid discharges from your eyes if you are suffering from bacterial conjunctivitis.
  • You will experience burning, watery eyes and running nose if you are affected by allergic conjunctivitis.
  • Seasonal allergies will, most of the time not require medical treatment, they are not contagious. However conjunctivitis will need your doctor’s attention.

Treatments for pink-eye

Pink-eye remedies depend on the kind of conjunctivitis you have.

  • Viral conjunctivitis:Apply a wet, cold cloth to your eyes multiple times a day. This will relieve the symptoms to some extent. However ensure the cloth is not shared with others.
  • Bacterial conjunctivitis: Your eye doctor Houston might prescribe antibiotics or eye ointments to treat bacterial conjunctivitis.
  • Allergic conjunctivitis: Allergy medicines can be prescribed to control the symptoms of allergic conjunctivitis.

Some of the above said symptoms also show up when you have other allergies. It is therefore wise to see your eye doctor Houston if you have red, watery or irritated eyes.

Prevention of Pink-eye

Take the following precautions to lower the risk of getting conjunctivitis:

  • Do not share your tissues or hand towels.
  • Cover your mouth and nose when coughing/sneezing. Do not rub or touch your eyes.
  • Never share your contact lenses.
  • Wash your hands every now and then, especially when you are at public places such as school/ college.
  • Use a hand disinfectant.
  • Use an antiseptic cleaner to clean the surfaces such as bathroom vanities, countertops and faucet handles.
  • Avoid sharing your phone with others.
  • Wear goggles when swimming.

Take care! Visit eye care Houston at the earliest if you experience pink eye symptoms. Precision Eye Care can be a great choice!

kids' vision problem symptoms and consequences

Can Vision Problems Be Affecting My Child’s Grades?

Studies have shown that nearly half of the children who struggle to read and learn in school complain of vision-related issues. In a recently published article in the journal Optometry and Vision Science, one study found that among 90 kindergartners and 91 first graders from a middle-class, suburban school in Cleveland, Ohio, visual performance was significantly related to reading performance. Uncorrected eye problems can affect their academic achievements. If students have a poor eyesight issue, they tend to concentrate less in terms of their academics which could also result in disruptive activities due to lack of ability to engage in classroom activities.

Causes of vision impairment or low vision:

Vision impairment can be caused by a number of things such as genetic conditions, damage to the pathways connecting the eye to the brain or to the visual center of the brain via injury to the eye, side effects from illness, effects from premature birth, etc. All reasons and probability of injury considered, vision impairment is something to take seriously to help you or your student get the assistance needed to excel in the classroom. Don’t let poor vision obstruct success.

Signs and symptoms of low vision:

Being a parent or guardian, or perhaps a student yourself, you need to pay extra attention to the overall health of your or your child’s eyesight. If you or your child has any of these symptoms, please don’t take them lightly and make an appointment with our incredible staff for a comprehensive eye exam for effective precautions.

The symptoms are as follows:

  • Difficulty in holding things up close to his or her face
  • Rub eyes a lot
  • Turn or tilt their head or cover one eye when looking at things up closely get tired after looking at things up closely – for example, reading, drawing or playing handheld games
  • Seem to see better during the day than at night
  • When they complain about tired eyes
  • Seem to have misaligned eyes or a squint
  • Seem clumsy – for example, they might knock things over or trip often, perhaps depth perception seems a tad off.
  • Poor grades
  • Inattentive during instruction time in the classroom
  • Behavior issues related to lack of engagement during learning experiences or tasks that require the ability to read or focus on printed materials from near or afar.

How low vision affects grades of the students?

If a child has a low vision, he or she will find it difficult to get access to information presented from a distance in the classroom. As your child moves through the elementary grades, the size of the print in your child’s textbooks may get smaller, while the amount of reading and writing he/she is expected to do increases as well, along with the expectation to read for comprehension. Depending on the setting or situation, he/she may need to utilize different reading methods or different tools to keep up with his assigned classwork. For this reason, it’s important to review how your child is performing in their various literacy tasks continually and as a parent/guardian it’s important to make sure a learning media assessment is conducted every year. Poor eyesight effects the students in the following ways:

  • Difficulty in communication – for example, your child might not see someone waving and smiling at him or not be able to make eye contact
  • Having problems in playing socializing with others due to feelings of academic inadequacy.
  • Difficulty in learning names of the context
  • Difficulty in learning to read and write
  • Inability to read for comprehension- this is a big one that can create gaps in learning and keeping your child behind in most academics.

How to help the children in classroom to cope up with vision impairment?

Let the student select a seat where he/she sees best. Place a student as close to the board as practicality allows. Teachers can reduce glare from windows and lights, as much as possible.

(Low vision students are usually slow readers because of the visual impairment.) Standardized tests that require separate answer sheets may be especially difficult for a student to use. You need to check modifications to see what procedure to use with the help of doctors.

Concrete steps need to be taken by both teachers as well as parents in ensuring that their children are not missing on anything because of low vision. Low vision is not a disability, it is just a disorder that can be controlled in due course with appropriate care.

school vision exam and comprehensive vision exam

School Eye Exams Vs. Comprehensive Exams

Many school kids face the eyesight problems. An eyesight problem needs to be solved at an early age to avoid any long-term damage. The main problem is parents tend to rely on school eye exams for the correct vision screening. Those screenings can be good but not good enough to be completely dependent on them.

What is school vision examination?

The main point of the screening is to check distant vision. It is done to test how well the child can read a chart from several feet away. But nearsighted vision isn’t tested in the screening. Color-vision testing is also done to check color blindness in kids. Being parents, you should never rely on such examinations. The National Institutes of Health found that professional vision screenings catch only 37% of children with poor vision. This is especially troubling because the most recent National Eye Institute (NEI) prevalence study revealed that 4% of preschoolers have significant nearsightedness, 21% have significant farsightedness, 10% have significant astigmatism, and 3% have significant strabismus (eye turning in or out), as assessed through eye examination. Vision screenings will miss the majority of children with strabismus, astigmatism and most of those with farsightedness.

Disadvantages of school vision examination

Your child’s ability to excel in the classroom might just be dependent on their eyesight, so it’s of the utmost importance to make sure you schedule a comprehensive exam tp provide every opportunity to learn and excel academically. You should not only rely on school vision test for it. The main disadvantages of school vision examination are:

  • Many screening facilities lack the equipment and knowledgeable staff, which are essential to screen young children. Traditional screening methods by non-eye care professionals are extremely difficult for children less than 4 years of age. So, it is not safe for your children.
  • Most vision screenings test for visual acuity only. Use of a vision chart alone will identify only 5% of the vision problems in children according to the American Foundation for Vision Awareness. A child may be able to see letters 20 feet away but that does not demonstrate whether his/her eyes are able to work together to read materials 12 inches away, or if there is an eye health problem or vision perception problem. It would not bring your child’s actual problems in notice.
  • Many eye diseases like Amblyopia, poor eyesight in one eye, sometimes known as “lazy eye, is often missed if the eyes appear aligned. You might not be aware of it.
  • In many cases, a vision screening can give you a false sense of security. When a child reports says that he is seeing 20/20, parents often assume that no further testing is needed and fail to ever take the child for a comprehensive eye examination. You should always go for comprehensive eye exams.

    Advantages of comprehensive eye exams

    One of the most beneficial aspects of a comprehensive eye exam is that you can trust that it’s methodically accurate and your kids will experience the difference a comprehensive eye exam can make in their lives. The advantages are:

  • A comprehensive eye exam can detect problems with eye movement, and vision training. It can improve the ability of the eyes to track and work together. So, your kids will be equipped with everything according to the procedures of the exam.
  • You would get an accurate picture of the movement of eye and disorders related to it by comprehensive eye exams. A doctor of optometry may be the first healthcare professional to detect high blood pressure through a comprehensive eye exam. The fine blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye can help identify risks of a stroke or heart attack before they occur.
  • Eye health can often signal the presence and state of serious medical conditions, such as hypertension, which is a leading cause of a heart attack, stroke, and chronic heart failure. What’s more, the information obtained through an eye exam can help healthcare providers treat patients preventively to decrease the risks of cardiovascular disease. So, you need to always opt for comprehensive eye exams rather relying on school eye tests.

    eye-exam-in-school

    The Importance of Back to School Eye Exams

    The Importance of Back to School Eye Exams

    Vision plays a very vital role in learning for both children and adults. Imagine yourself sitting in a classroom full of your peers, and you are finding yourself struggling to focus on taking down the notes. You can’t even shift your focus immediately from near to far. Imagine a day without being able to read a single paragraph, everything blurry and double vision. Many children fail to realize that their struggles in the classroom are in no way correlated to intelligence or how hard they should be trying; rather they are unable to process the data put before them visually.

    How Vision Issues Negatively Impact School Performance?

    Sometimes when children find difficulty reading the board in the classroom or the books on their desks, teachers, and parents feel eyeglasses and lenses can help them, and they are right. It is very obvious vision discomforts linked to the way the eyes function and how the brain operates visual information can also restrict your child’s ability to understand. Generally, children perform poorly in school due to poor eyesight since over 80 percent of learning is visual.

    Let’s know about the “3 R’s”, which include:

    Recognition: the ability to recognize the differences between letters and numbers, i.e., the difference between “m” and “n.”

    Reading comprehension: capturing and interpreting what they are reading & learning, i.e., being able to visualize and understand the paragraph that they just read.

    Retention: the ability to recall specific information read.

    The consequences of poor eyesight on the 3 R’s can also lead to low self-esteem, as well as fatigue and headaches.

    Importance of Eye Exam in School

    One of the main reasons people don’t exactly rush to get their children’s eyes checked is because of expense. It can be challenging to pay necessary bills, food, electricity, and clothes, so, the addition of what tends to be viewed as an “optional” check-up like eye exams, doesn’t seem to make it onto a family’s monthly expense budget. But it is one of the best investments you can make in your child’s future. Timely identification of a child’s eyesight problem can be the deciding factor in a child’s ability to succeed in a classroom or fall behind in their studies. Along with some new clothing, buying the school requirements, pencils, pens, notebooks, paper, etc. and also understanding that “back-to-school” can be an overwhelming time of year.

    Your children may feel nervous about getting an eye exam done. Explain to them the procedure of eye exam and take them to see yours. Encourage them to say what they see, and there is no wrong answer. Take them for treatment when they are well rested as tiredness can affect the accuracy of the result.

    Identify even if your child says nothing at all, these are indications to detect and treat quickly before the year advances:

    • Loses their pace while reading.
    • They will start to avoid close work.
    • Will always hold reading pages closer than normal.
    • Cultivate the habit of rubbing his or her eyes.
    • Will suffer from headaches.
    • They will tend to use a finger to maintain place when reading.
    • They will skip or be confused with small words when reading.
    • The consistency of performing below potential will be frequent.

    Eye vision problems can break your child’s confidence, keep your child irritated with eye strain, and quickly become off-task in the classroom losing valuable instruction time. Provide every opportunity to learn this school year and schedule your back to school eye exam(s) today!

    eye-problem-signs

    Signs You Need New Glasses

    Signs You Need New Glasses

    If you wear specs, you must be asking yourself: “When do I need new glasses?” While looking for that answer, it is likely that you are finding it difficult to let go of your current pair. It is true that your old specs have become a part of your life. However, adapting to newer ones will be extremely beneficial.

    New glasses are required when your eyes need them to survive. Remember, glasses are not just fashion accessories but objects of absolute necessity. Keeping that in mind, you must be aware of specific changes which signal that you need a new pair of glasses.

    Here’s a list of reasons you must get a new pair of glasses.

    Having Blurred Vision Wearing Your Old Specs?

    While feeling that you can see perfectly with your old specs, there are times you may have ignored blurred vision. By overlook such an issue, you are putting your eyes under strain.

    If you’re trying hard to see perfectly with your glasses on – your eyes are undergoing unconscious strain. Unconscious eye strain can be very harmful in the more extended run. Now is the time to get a new pair of glasses after you get your eyes checked.

    Are you Squinting Often?

    Are you narrowing your eyes to see something located near or far from you? If you are, then you may also be having headaches and neck pain. These are clear signs of poor vision. Get your eye checkup done for a new prescription of glasses.

    Your Old Pair May Be Damaged

    If you have been wearing your old glasses for a long time, it is quite likely that it has gone through noticeable wear and tear. Damage on the lens or the critical areas of the glasses can be harmful to your eyes. This the time when you must opt for new specs even if you can see everything clearly with your old ones.

    Take Advantage of New Technology

    In this age of globalization, eyewear technology has augmented to another dimension. In fact, now you can have lenses specific to your field of work.

    For instance, your job may require you to work on a computer for hours then your eyes are going through a constant strain. You can take advantage of the new technology of lenses which reduces screen glare.

    You can get an eye checkup done by your eye doctor before going for your new pair of specs. These may include the following:

    • Comprehensive Eye Exam: This consists of a complete eye checkup which will help to detect and diagnose vision changes and potential problems.
    • iFusion Exam: OCT and digital fundus photography are integrated into one easy-to-use platform for a more comprehensive clinical evaluation. This iFusion examination, which is the latest method used for a compact clinical evaluation, helps in diagnosing harmful diseases before they create a vision problem.
    • Pediatric Vision: An annual eye exam for your children is a necessity. With pediatric vision, you can make sure that your child never loses vision when he grows older. Pediatric vision helps in the early treatment of vision problems.

    The new iFusion system combines OCT and digital fundus photography, the two most important imaging modalities in eye care, into one easy-to-use platform for a more comprehensive clinical evaluation. This combination is Optovue’s next step in its vision of bringing the most innovative imaging solutions to the broad spectrum of eye care.