Eye health resource
What Diseases Can Be Detected in an Eye Exam?
A comprehensive eye exam can reveal signs of glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, retinal vascular changes, and other eye-health problems.
Reviewed for accuracy by Justin Bazan, OD on .
A comprehensive eye exam can reveal much more than whether you need glasses. Depending on your age, symptoms, medical history, risk factors, and examination findings, an eye doctor may identify signs of eye disease before you notice a change in vision.
An eye exam can also reveal findings that are associated with systemic conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure. That does not mean an eye exam replaces care from your primary-care physician or another medical specialist. Instead, an unexpected eye finding may be one reason to recommend additional medical follow-up.
What Eye Diseases Can an Eye Exam Find?
A comprehensive eye-health evaluation may identify or raise concern for conditions including:
- Glaucoma — a group of diseases that damage the optic nerve, often without noticeable early symptoms.
- Cataracts — clouding of the eye's natural lens that can cause blur, glare, reduced contrast, or changes in color perception.
- Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) — disease affecting the macula, the part of the retina responsible for detailed central vision.
- Diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema — retinal blood-vessel changes related to diabetes.
- Retinal tears, detachments, or other retinal abnormalities — some of which can threaten vision if not treated promptly.
- Corneal, eyelid, tear-film, and ocular-surface problems — including dry eye, inflammation, infection, or contact-lens-related complications.
The exact tests used are not identical for every patient. Your doctor chooses the examination methods that make sense for your symptoms, risk factors, age, and findings.
Can an Eye Exam Show Signs of Diabetes or High Blood Pressure?
Sometimes. The retina contains blood vessels that can be examined directly. Diabetes can damage retinal blood vessels, and high blood pressure can also produce visible vascular changes in the eye. An eye doctor may notice these findings during an eye-health examination.
Those findings are important, but they do not replace medical testing. Diabetes is diagnosed and managed with appropriate medical evaluation and laboratory testing, and hypertension is diagnosed and monitored with blood-pressure measurements. Eye findings can be one part of the larger health picture.
How Glaucoma Is Evaluated
Glaucoma cannot be ruled in or ruled out by a single pressure reading. A glaucoma evaluation may consider eye pressure, the appearance and structure of the optic nerve, the thickness and health of retinal nerve-fiber layers, visual-field testing, corneal thickness, drainage-angle anatomy, family history, and other risk factors.
Park Slope Eye uses tools including optical coherence tomography (OCT) when clinically appropriate. OCT provides detailed cross-sectional structural imaging of the retina and optic nerve. It adds useful information, but the scan itself is not a stand-alone glaucoma diagnosis.
How Retinal Imaging Helps
Park Slope Eye uses Optos Daytona wide-angle retinal imaging to create a high-resolution photograph of much of the retina in seconds. The image gives the doctor a documented view that can be compared over time and may show findings that deserve a closer look.
We also use a Topcon Maestro OCT when cross-sectional imaging of the retina or optic nerve would add useful information. OCT can help evaluate structural changes associated with conditions such as glaucoma, macular disease, and diabetic retinal disease.
Retinal photography and OCT are different tests, and neither automatically replaces every other part of an eye examination.
Do You Still Need Dilation?
Not every Park Slope Eye patient needs dilating drops at every visit. Wide-angle retinal imaging often gives us the retinal documentation we need for a routine examination, but dilation remains important when symptoms, risk factors, or examination findings make a wider or more detailed internal view clinically necessary.
If we recommend dilation, we will explain why it is useful for your particular eyes.
Symptoms Still Matter
Many eye diseases develop quietly, but symptoms can also provide important clues. New flashes or floaters, a curtain or shadow in vision, sudden vision loss, significant eye pain, marked redness, or a sudden change in vision should not simply wait for a routine annual visit.
If you have a new eye-health concern that is not an emergency, email Park Slope Eye so we can help determine the appropriate next step. A true emergency or sudden severe vision problem requires prompt emergency evaluation.
Eye Exams Are About Vision and Eye Health
A comprehensive eye exam checks both how clearly you see and the health of the eyes. When a medical eye condition is involved, medical eye care and medical insurance may apply depending on your plan and the services performed.
If you are due for an exam or have noticed a change in your vision, book an appointment with Park Slope Eye.
Originally published . Substantially updated .