Taking care of your eye health should be a priority in an individual’s life. Making sure that if your vision is declining that you are equipped with the right corrective lenses necessary to treat your poor vision is crucial. The most traditional way of doing this is, of course, visiting your eye doctor and receiving an eye exam. However, with the internet taking more and more of a role in everybody’s daily lives, the temptation to take care of all their needs online is high. The ability to stay in the comfort of one’s own home to receive an online eye exam instead of going to see an eye doctor sounds appealing. But is this really best for your eye care?
Online Eye Exams Don’t Evaluate Eye Health
An important fact to understand is that an online eye exam does not evaluate the health of your eyes. These online eye exams should be more correctly identified as online vision tests because they only measure your visual acuity and any refractive errors. However, online eye exams do enable you to obtain a valid corrective lenses prescription quickly. This comes in handy if you lose or break your current eyewear and are unable to make an appointment with your optometrist, but this is as far as their value goes. Online eye exams may be able to prescribe prescriptions, but they do not actually test your eye health. Receiving a comprehensive eye exam from an eye care professional allows you to test and find out if you suffer from eye conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, among many more. Online eye exams have no way of knowing what is really going on with your eye health.
They are a Safety Issue
Many online retailers have already come under extreme scrutiny for the danger many of their glasses put people in. The material used in making glasses sold online is of a lesser quality than those bought from an eye care professional. While these online retailers and online eye exams make you believe that cutting the cost is worth it, nothing can make up for the care a professional eye doctor brings. They carefully examine your eyes to make sure there are no lingering issues or potential diseases that may affect your vision in the future. They have the appropriate equipment to craft the perfect prescription for you. A study done by the American Optometric Association (AOA) found that nearly half (44.8%) of all glasses ordered online contained an inaccurate prescription or didn’t meet safety standards designed to protect the eyes.
Not a Long Time Money Saver
While at the moment, it may seem as though you are saving a couple of dollars, these online eye exams may end up costing you further down the road. Many of the prescriptions are wrong, leading you to have to pay to get a new test done. Even worse, most of these tests do not accept health insurance or vision insurance like most eye care practices. Your copay for actually going to your optometrist to receive an extensive and thorough eye exam may end up being cheaper than one done online.
While being able to take care of your vision online may seem like a convenience at the time, nothing beats the care and precision that comes with visiting an eye care professional at First Eye Care DFW. If you are experiencing vision troubles or just need to replace or update your glasses, do not visit an online vision test and schedule an appointment with an optometrist instead.