FAQ

Dr. Dao is also a patient in that she has dry eyes and also wears contact lenses.  Therefore, she can personally relate to the need for comfortable contact lenses that feel comfortable all day long, as if they're not even there.

Many contact lenses will feel adequate initially, but as the day goes on, will start feeling less comfortable. Others may feel fine but make the eyes red by the afternoon or evening. Others start off with clear vision but become blurrier towards the end of the day.

Those are just a few reasons why Dr. Dao uses top-of-the-line, cutting edge technology contact lenses to provide clear, crisp vision, while at the same time allowing superior oxygen transmissibility to provide the eyes with all the oxygen necessary for maintaining healthy eyes while wearing contact lenses and preventing potential eye infections.

A routine exam as described in #1 will result in a prescription for eye glasses only.  Now, say the patient indicated that he prefers wearing contact lenses instead of glasses. The doctor will now perform a series of more tests. She would have to convert the eyeglass prescription to a contact lens prescription because the contact lenses sit right on our eyes while the eyeglasses sit on our nose bridge. Then, the curvature of the eyes are measured so that the doctor can choose the contact lenses with similar curvature for a good fit. After that, each eye will get to wear a contact lens with the correct prescription and curvature for a week before returning for a follow up visit. If, for example, the patient says the contact lenses give clear vision but feel a little dry by the end of the day, the doctor will change the contact lens material to another kind that will provide better comfort.

The patient then wears this second pair for another week, and when he says this pair feels great and provides good vision as well, and the doctor sees that the lens still fit well after equilibrating on the eyes and doesn't cause any signs of ocular stress, this second pair will NOW become the correct pair for the patient. At this point, this second pair of contact lenses with its material, curvature, diameter, and power will be called the contact lens prescription.

Prior to this, there is not a contact lens prescription yet. So, a contact lens prescription is one that provides good, clear, vision as well as no ocular stress.If the patient has never worn contact lenses before and needs training on how to put them in and take them out, training will be provided. All of these procedures are considered a contact lens exam. Every year, our eyes change because our bodies change due to aging. Therefore, just as we need new yearly eye exams, we also need new contact lens exams. Dr. Dao herself is a contact lens wearer for over 20 years, so she is always using the most up-to-date technology lenses for maximal eye health and comfort.

 

A routine vision exam is when the patient's eyes do not hurt, itch or have any obvious infections and only complains of not seeing clearly at certain distances such as while driving or doing computer work.. The doctor will perform a complete eye exam as described above in #1.

Now, say this same patient wakes up several months later with a red, swollen, painful left eye. This time, the doctor will examine the left eye for causes of this problem (and often the right eye too to see if the condition has spread to it) and prescribe eye drops that the patient can get from the pharmacy with a prescription.

For this office visit, the patient would use the same medical insurance that they use whenever they go to see their family doctor instead of the vision insurance already used for the routine vision exam.

To look inside the eyes and check for abnormalities, the doctor must look through the pupil. However, when the doctor shines a light through the pupil in attempt to look in, the pupil will constrict down to a tiny opening, making it very difficult to look in and examine the entire back part of the eyes.

Therefore, a special eye drop is instilled into both eyes to enlarge the pupils temporarily to provide the doctor with a good view to the inside back part of the eyes. The eye drop is safe, approved by the Board of Optometry, does not cause harmful side effects and lasts at most, 3-4 hours. This procedure is called dilation of the eyes.

Naturally, we recommend dilation of the eyes yearly because our bodies are dynamic and always changing, not to mention getting older as time goes by; therefore, just because everything was normal last year doesn't guarantee that all will still be normal this year.

Our eyes and vision is much too precious to take chances on. If the doctor found something abnormal during the health check part of the eyes, she will refer you to the specialist for that specific problem, for example the need for cataract surgery.If it is a problem that she can and does treat, the patient will be re-scheduled back for treatment.

In addition to testing for the refractive error, meaning the degree of near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism, because of the fact that the eyes work together as a team, how well a person's eyes co-ordinate with each other will also be examined.

For example, some of us can see perfectly well but can only last 10 or 15 minutes when reading or working on the computer. (Some of us, children and adults alike, even jump or skip lines or lose our places while reading!). Therefore, testing only how well a person can read down the eye chart is obviously not enough.

Dr. Dao's examination consists of testing the eyes' focusing ability to ensure that our patients can read comfortably and sufficiently long enough to perform their work.

Moreover, the eyes themselves must be healthy; otherwise, the best prescription still will not provide clear vision. Therefore, eye health testing including eye pressure test, peripheral field testing (how well we can see out of the sides of our eyes) and examining  the external  as well as the internal parts of the eyes are all included.