Measuring Your Level of Vision

One space of the sight test that is always misunderstood by the affected person is in regard to explaining whether your eyesight has received better or worse and does that mean the eyeglasses need altering?

There are related, but very distinct ways to talk about and describe your eyesight. One is to talk about what your prescription is and how it has changed. The opposite is to talk about what line you can see on the sight test chart. The 2 are linked, but a change in one doesn’t essentially imply a change in the other. I usually say to my patients “It does not matter what prescription is in your specs as long you possibly can see the chart. It is when you may’t see the chart, despite what we put in your eyeglasses, that we’ve a problem.”

The chart normally used is a called a Snellen chart. It’s named after a Dutch eye physician called Hermann Snellen who designed it in 1862. The letters are massive on the top and get gradually smaller as you move down the chart. The thickness of the lines that make up the letters, is the same as the thickness of the spaces between the lines. The height and width of the letters is 5 times the width of the lines.

You will have heard the phrase “20/20”. This is normally understood to mean good vision. In reality, most individuals with good vision have eyesight higher than 20/20. It means which you could see, from 20 toes, what try to be able to see from 20 feet. We now truly use 6/6 instead of 20/20. This represents the change from toes to meters (20 feet equals 6 meters). If you can see 6/5(very good eyesight), this means you may see, from 6 meters, what it is best to should get to 5 meters to be able to see. If in case you have 6/60 (poor eyesight), it means it’s a must to be 6 meters away to see what you should be able to see from 60 meters. There are different levels in between.

The primary measure is called vision. This is a measure of what you can see without any assist at all. For someone who doesn’t want glasses and has no eye health problems, it is normally 6/6 or a little better. As your prescription gets stronger, the second number gets higher. The top letter of the chart is often 6/60. Needing eyeglasses just isn’t the only cause for this number to be higher. You probably have eye problems, it’s possible you’ll not have a prescription but still only be able to see the bigger letters. This is the place the time period visual acuity becomes important.

Your visual acuity tells us how well you’ll be able to see with the right prescription in your glasses. When you have something mistaken with your eyes comparable to cataract or macular degeneration, then even with the best possible pair of specs for you, chances are you’ll only see among the larger letters on the chart. Exactly how far down the chart you can see with the best spectacles is your visual acuity.

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