Q: What diagnostic testing is needed for an eye examination?
A: Eye examinations are an important part of your regular health checkup. Just as for other parts of the body, your doctor may order additional testing to diagnosis and monitor for certain eye diseases.
Corneal topography measures the shape of the clear front part of the eye and may be helpful in planning for LASIK refractive surgery or for keratoconus, a disease of the cornea.
Visual field testing maps out the area of vision using patient input to flashes of light. This may be helpful to evaluate peripheral vision in conditions such as glaucoma.
Ocular B-scan ultrasonography uses sound waves to detect conditions within or behind the eye just like an obstetrician uses ultrasound to visualize a baby while pregnant.
Other tests are important for examining the retina.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive method that uses light waves to take cross-sectional pictures of the retina. Your optometrist or ophthalmologist may order this test for conditions such as macular degeneration and diabetic eye disease.
In more advanced or atypical cases of these diseases, a retina specialist may order fluorescein angiography, which uses a small amount of dye injected into a vein in the arm to examine the blood flow into the retina.
– Devon H. Ghodasra, M.D., Southeastern Retina Associates; member, Chattanooga-Hamilton County Medical Society