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How important is your child’s eye exam?

As your child prepares to start another school year, don’t forget to take care of one of the most important learning tools – their eyes.

Around 80% of learning involves your eyes whether it’s reading, writing or watching a screen. Given that, an uncorrected vision problem can be a significant barrier to learning. Eye issues such as myopia (short-sightedness) can make it more difficult to see the front of the class, follow and understand lessons. Children with undetected vision problems who struggle in class can also be misdiagnosed with learning difficulties.

Regular eye exams are therefore critical to help your child advance through school, so book an eye exam today.

Going Greener – 10 Trees Planted

From recycled/sustainable eyewear, recycling old and unused contact lenses & frames to changing the way we use power, water, office procedures, all contribute to Hughes, Macdonald & Davidson’s efforts to go greener. But, that’s not all! We are also making donations to plant trees in the UK, to restore and conserve our forests, offsetting our carbon emissions.

We will continue to look for ways to deliver the eyecare our patients deserve in the most sustainable way.

Please be aware, our Peterhead, Inverurie and Banchory practices will be closed for a local holiday on Monday 5th June 2023. We will open as normal, on Tuesday 6th June. 9am to 5pm.

Our Turriff practice will be open as normal.

Life’s all about living with the freedom and confidence to enjoy it while never missing the moments that matter….

To determine if Multifocal contact lenses are right for you, come and speak to us. To give you an idea, ask yourself  – does this sound like you?

You are over 40 and you struggle when reading labels, restaurant menus are difficult to read, your fitness app isn’t easy to focus on, maps on your phone are seem small or even entering your card numbers can be a bit of a guess.

If this sounds all too familiar, it could be you have a condition called Presbyopia.

What is Presbyopia?

Presbyopia is a natural condition that tends to occur as we get a little older. With age, the lens inside our eye gets thicker and becomes less flexible which means it loses it ability to change shape and adjust focus as easily as it once did.

Speak to us today to find out if Acuvue Multifocal Contact Lenses are right for you. Book an appointment today

What is lazy eye?

Lazy eye, also known as amblyopia, is a vision development disorder in which an eye fails to achieve normal acuity, even with prescription glasses’ or contact lenses. Lazy eye occurs early in life and can prevent your child from developing normal visual acuity in the affected eye.

There are treatments for the underlying causes of lazy eye. If detected and treated early, poor vision from the lazy eye can be avoided. Amblyopia typically begins during infancy and early childhood. In most cases, only one eye is affected. But in some cases, amblyopia can occur in both eyes.

If lazy eye is detected early in life and promptly treated, reduced vision can be avoided, but untreated lazy eye can cause permanent loss of vision in the affected eye.

Symptoms

Lazy eye can be hard to detect as its typically a problem in infant vision development. The easiest way to identify lazy eye are:

• Misalignment of the eyes, a condition called strabismus. If your child has crossed eyes or some other apparent eye misalignment, make an appointment for one of our optometrists to check it out.
• If your child cries or fusses when you cover an eye, covering one at a time, you may find they cry when you cover the good eye
• Poor depth perception
• Repeated eye closure or squinting
• Eyes that don’t move in the same direction when your child is trying to focus

Causes of lazy eye

There are 3 causes of lazy eye:

1. Strabismic amblyopia, which is the most common cause of lazy eye. To avoid double vision caused by poorly aligned eyes, the brain will ignore the visual input from the misaligned eye, leading to amblyopia in that eye (the lazy eye).
2. Refractive amblyopia – sometimes it is caused by unequal refractive errors in the two eyes, despite perfect eye alignment. For example, one may have significant short-sightedness or long-sightedness and the other is not. Or one has a significant astigmatism, and the other eye does not. In such cases, the brain relies on the eye that has less uncorrected refractive error and tunes out the blurred vision from the other eye, causing amblyopia in that eye from disuse.
3. Deprivation amblyopia – this type of amblyopia is caused by something that obstructs light from entering and being focused in a baby’s eye, such as congenital cataract. Prompt treatment of congenital cataracts with cataract surgery is necessary to allow normal development to occur.

Treatment of lazy eye

Treatment methods depends on the severity of the condition and patient preference, which our optometrists will discuss with you. An example of such is:

1. Corrective lenses and glasses – for the cases of refractive amblyopia, normal vision can be achieved simply by fully correcting the refractive error in both eyes with glasses or contact lenses
2. Strabismus surgery – treatment of strabismus amblyopia often involves strabismus surgery, followed by use of an eye patch on the dominant eye and some form of vision therapy to help both eyes work together equally as a team.

If you are concerned about your child’s vision, book an appointment with us today.