About Your Eyes

Regular visits to your ophthalmologist are as important as examinations by your family physician or dentist because some eye diseases do not cause symptoms for months or years. In many cases, early treatment of glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, crossed eyes and some forms of macular degeneration can prevent loss of sight and even blindness. Our goal is to protect your sight through early diagnosis and treatment of eye conditions.

Virginia Beach Eye Center recommends ophthalmolgy exams for adults every 2 years. For children, a routine eye exam by an ophthalmolgist - in addition to the general eye exams performed by primary physicians - should be completed by the age of 7 years. Diabetics should have exams annually. For glaucoma and macular degeneration patients, exams are recommended every six months.At Virginia Beach Eye Center, we specialize in the treatment of these eye diseases through surgical and nonsurgical approaches. Call us today at 481-5555 to schedule your exam.

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Refractive Errors

Normal Eye - Clear vision is the result of light entering the cornea (outer window of the eye), passing through the lens (behind the iris), and focusing directly on the retina, at the back of the eye.

Nearsightedness - If the cornea is too steep or the eye is too long, light will be focused in front of the retina, causing distance objects to be blurry and near objects clear. Refractive surgery with this condition must reduce the focusing power of the cornea or the lens in order to move the focal point back to the retina.

Astigmatism - If the cornea is more curved in one direction than the other, light coming into the eye will have multiple focal points with resultant blurred vision both at distrance and at near. Refractive surgery in this case involves making the cornea more symmetrical, reducing the multiple focal points to a single focus.

Farsightedness - If the cornea is too flat or the eye is too short, light would focus behind the retina, causing near objects to be very blurry, but distance objects can also be blurred. Refractive surgery must increase the focusing power of the cornea or the lens to pull the focus back up to the retina.

Presbyopia - This is an aging change where the lens inside the eye loses its ability to focus, usually noticed around age 40. This change causes the patient to require reading glasses, obtain bifocals, or in the case of nearsightedness, remove their glasses to read. Surgical correction of this condition is obtained using the monovision techniques or the crystalens® focusing implant.