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FAQs

FAQs

Eye Exams

How often should I be getting a comprehensive eye exam?

Comprehensive eye exams are recommended once a year for individuals of all ages. Annual eye exams are covered by Alberta Health Care for children under the age of 19 years and seniors over the age of 65 years.

Vision is beyond just seeing 20/20. There are several eye conditions where the distance vision is unaffected, yet the visual system fails to work adequately due to eye teaming and coordination problems resulting in constant eye strain and headaches. If you have good vision, the purpose of routine eye examinations is to ensure adequate eye teaming and oculomotor functions, and to screen for eye conditions that can affect the front and back of the eye. Most eye conditions are very subtle in nature when they begin making it impossible for you to detect them until they are quite advanced, which in most cases is too late to treat. These subtle signs are easily detectable by an eyecare professional when they look at the front and back of your eye during your routine eye examination. When detected early, many eye conditions are treatable to either stop or slow down their progression.

Children’s Eye Exams

Studies have shown that 1 in 4 school-aged children have a vision problem. This can be related to their visual acuity, eye focusing or eye teaming skills. Often, children do not complain of any visual problems. This makes it even more important to get their routine eye exams every year. Eye problems in children include blurry vision, eye strain, eye pain, double vision, dry eyes etc. If left untreated, eye problems in children can start impacting their school performance or can sometimes be misdiagnosed as behavioural problems such as ADHD and dyslexia.

Our clinic has specialized child-friendly equipment that helps our Calgary optometrists check their eyes without them saying a single word! Our optometrists are thoroughly experienced in examining children and take pride in their skills for providing a fun and friendly environment for your child’s eye exam in Calgary.

Contact Lenses

Although contact lenses are convenient and work great with our active and busy lifestyles, they do have the potential to cause changes to our eyes. Contact lenses reduce the amount of oxygen that enters your eye, as there is a physical layer that separates your eye from the air. If worn too much or inadequately, the lack of adequate oxygen can cause changes to the eye that can in turn start damaging the eye. These changes are essential to detect at an early stage to ensure that appropriate measures can be taken to treat them or prevent them from worsening. Yearly eye exams and contact lens fittings ensure that there are no such changes that are occurring in your eyes.

Certainly not. Contact lens technology is constantly changing and improving, and at Urban Eyecare, we make sure to stay updated on all the latest contact lens technology. Our doctor fits patients with mild, moderate and severe amounts of near-sightedness and far-sightedness and those who have astigmatism. In addition, there are also contact lenses available for those who require a distance and near correction, called multifocal contact lenses. These provide you with clear distance and near vision without having to pull out those reading glasses!

Vision Therapy and Myopia Control

Absolutely! If a child is unable to obtain clear and comfortable vision for a prolonged period of time, this will lead into them associating reading and near work with discomfort. This in turn leads to poor concentration and poor comprehension when reading even though they can “see” and is often misdiagnosed as a behavioral dysfunction, when it is in fact a visual dysfunction that can be treated.
A child can have perfectly good vision at distance and near, but if they have an eye focussing or eye teaming disorder, then they are unable to maintain that clear vision for longer than a few minutes. This in turn leads to symptoms such as eyestrain, headaches, blurred vision, dry eyes, and difficulty with reading comprehension. If they have an eye tracking disorder, then even though they can see everything that is on the page, they struggle with reading because they lose their place when reading or skip words or lines and have difficulty remembering what they have read. These conditions are effectively treated by Vision Therapy.
The best way to find out if a child needs vision therapy is to get their eyes examined every year, even if they are not complaining of any blurry vision. An eye exam a far more than a vision test, and screens for functional vision conditions and assesses ocular health.
Definitely! Vision Therapy is often performed for individuals who have a “normal” functioning visual system, but want to enhance it to improve their eye tracking abilities, depth perception and eye-to-brain connections to improve reaction times, in turn improving sports performance. Ask our doctors about Sports Therapy!
Call our clinic and ask to be booked for a “Vision Therapy Assessment”. This is a 25-40 minute appointment that includes a series of tests to examine an individual’s eye tracking, focussing and teaming abilities as well as the eye to brain interactions. These tests are different from those performed during the child’s routine annual eye exam and are performed by our Developmental Optometrist.

The vision therapy in Calgary at Urban Eyecare comprises in-office visits once every week (unless stated otherwise) where the individual being treated performs a series of designated exercises and activities with the vision therapist for half-hour. The individual is then given homework exercises that they perform once a day at home for the remaining days of the week. Several progress checks are done over the course of the therapy to assess the rate and amount of improvement of the individual’s visual skills. The length of the program varies for each individual based on factors such as age and the type and severity of the condition.