Even though your vision might allow you to see well enough, there are many vision related issues that go undiagnosed if not checked for by an eye health professional. There is an abundance of eye health concerns found outside the typical refractive areas of nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, that can have frustrating effects in your life without treatment. Often, especially in children, symptoms of these conditions are mistaken for other problems, like learning disabilities, for example. Children might experience symptoms of short attention span (especially while reading), difficulty with reading comprehension, dizziness, frequent blinking or rubbing of eyes, difficulty concentrating, headaches, poor depth perception, and neck strain. Any of these symptoms could be related to an undiagnosed bincolur vision condition.
Binocular Vision:Binocular vision is when our eyes work together to produce a 3D image that relates an awareness of spatial distances between objects and ourselves. Our eyes work together to create this image, but because we have two separate eyes, there’s always a chance that something can occur with one or the other that will affect the way we see or how hard our eyes have to work to create the image. These types of issues aren’t always manifested in how well we see necessarily, but can still play a large role in our overall health and happiness.
Poor binocular vision is apparent in the following conditions:
Amblyopia: This is more commonly referred to as “lazy eye.” It often happens as a result of an extreme refractive error in one eye. Over time, the brain begins to favor the visual input from one specific eye, using the other less, which causes that eye to lose acuity, or clear vision.
Convergence Excess:This happens when the eyes turn inward more than they should to focus on closer objects.
Convergence Insufficiency:This is when the eyes struggle to turn inward to focus on objects that are close.
Divergence Excess:In this condition, the eyes turn outward too far when attempting to focus on far away objects.
Divergence Insufficiency:This is when the eyes continue to stay turned inward when trying to focus on an object far away.
Strabismus:Sometimes one eye will turn inward or outward while the other doesn’t.
Vertical Heterophoria:This occurs when the eyes aren’t lined up with each other accurately in the vertical direction. It causes them to strain when trying to produce a coherent image together.
It’s so important to see Dr. Smith annually for your routine annual vision exam to let him watch for any of these conditions. Of course, if you are experiencing any of the symptoms and feel it could be related to your vision, please let us know (435.359.2020) at any time so we can get you scheduled for an appointment.