You’ve heard of eye diseases like glaucoma or cataracts, and you may think they’re diseases limited to senior adults. That’s an incorrect assumption. Without regular eye exams, you risk permanent damage to your vision. Common eye diseases often show no symptoms in their early stages.
At Wolchok Eye Associates, PA, our board-certified ophthalmologists and optometrist perform comprehensive eye exams to detect early-stage eye disease. We provide expert treatment to help prevent vision loss.
Here’s why regular eye exams are important not only for your eye health but also for your overall health.
There’s a parallel truth to the saying that your eyes are a window into your soul; they’re also a window into your overall health. Just as diseases attack other parts of your body, eye diseases also damage your eyes. If left untreated, eye diseases cause vision loss.
Your eye doctor can detect high blood sugar from diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and symptoms of autoimmune diseases before noticeable symptoms arise. All of these conditions affect your vascular system.
Just as in the rest of your body, blood vessels in your eyes bring life-giving nutrients to them. At an eye exam, your eye doctor can detect signs of disease such as abnormal vessel growth, tiny spots on your retina from leaking blood vessels, bulging blood vessels called microaneurysms, and more — before you have visible symptoms.
More than 25% of people with diabetes don’t know they have it. It can cause an eye disease called diabetic retinopathy — a silent disease because it often has no symptoms in the early stages. That helps explain why it’s the leading cause of blindness in American adults. Blood vessel damage in your retina can lead to irreversible vision loss if left untreated.
Having diabetic retinopathy also places you at increased risk of other eye diseases, including glaucoma and cataracts, which can also lead to vision loss without treatment.
The good news? Diabetic retinopathy is preventable in most cases when diagnosed and treated in the early stages.
Although you may have no symptoms, some warning signs of diabetic retinopathy include floaters or difficulty driving at night. Without an eye exam, you might think these are signs of normal aging.
Glaucoma causes fluid buildup in your eye and damages your optic nerve. It can lead to blindness without treatment. Glaucoma is another silent eye disease; the fluid accumulation is gradual, and you may have no symptoms in the early stages.
At an eye exam, your eye doctor can see any damage to your optic nerve. Damaged optic nerve cells don’t regenerate, so it’s critical to identify this disease at an early stage. Your eye doctor treats glaucoma with prescription eyedrops, laser therapy, or surgery.
You may think of cataracts as a problem for senior adults. Yet if you have diabetes, you’re up to five times more likely to develop cataracts, even at a young age.
Without an eye exam, you may first turn to stronger reading glasses, not realizing you have an eye disease. As cataracts develop slowly, you may experience cloudy or blurry vision, see halos around lights, and need to change your eyeglass prescriptions more frequently.
Poor vision due to cataracts can cause motor vehicle accidents and falls. Wolchok eye specialists perform cataract surgery frequently. Don’t wait too long; it increases the risk of complications.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) can impair your vision to the point where you must give up driving. It has two forms: dry and wet. As with cataracts and glaucoma, you may not experience visible symptoms with early or intermediate-stage dry AMD.
AMD damages your macula, the part of your eye that regulates your central vision: what you see looking straight ahead. If you have diabetes, smoke, have high blood pressure, and/or high cholesterol, you’re at an elevated risk of developing AMD. Your Wolchok eye doctor treats both wet and dry AMD to help prevent vision loss.
