In most cases, people go to the eye doctor and everything looks fine. Normal comprehensive eye exams are designed to determine the health of your eyes, which is of great importance. To ensure all is well in the back of your eye, you should have your eyes dilated once a year. When an eye doctor examines your vision, the doctor checks for distance and near vision and prescribes glasses or contact lenses if you can't see clearly.

What does a functional vision exam entail?

Like a comprehensive eye exam, a functional eye exam includes checking your eye health, refraction, and whether you are nearsighted, farsighted, presbyopic, or astigmatic. During a functional vision exam, our eye doctor also carefully examines each eye to determine if the focusing system is balanced. Do you have adequate stability and flexibility? In addition, they assess how well you are able to control eye coordination and your movement patterns. 

In the event that our doctors find that there is another issue, such as binocular dysfunction, then they start investigating how this is affecting your ability to function and read. Your visualization is often effective when you struggle with certain things at home. In addition, they examine visual perceptual or motor difficulties.

What happens if the eye doctor detects a functional vision problem?

Normally, if those things are identified, you would undergo further testing. Depending on the doctors findings they will recommend a sensorimotor evaluation or perceptual evaluation to further diagnose what they are finding. At this point, you realize your vision has been affected. Even if you are able to see 20/20, your eyes are probably not well coordinated, and this is why you feel so clumsy.

In addition, you may discover that your short-term memory is impaired when you think about doing something and realize that you do not possess a good ability to visualize any kind of visual memory that will allow you to recall effectively.

Once the eye doctor has run further tests they will recommend a treatment plan. Many times that includes vision therapy. 

A considerable number of studies have shown that correcting vision problems with vision therapy can significantly reduce visual symptoms and improve reading performance.

Schedule an eye exam for vision therapy

In some cases, a standard comprehensive eye exam may not be sufficient, this is especially true when the patient is experiencing symptoms of poor vision after having an eye exam. Take our visual assessment to see if you have symptoms that indicate a functional vision problem.  It may be necessary to receive a functional eye exam to have your vision examined from all angles. Dr. Ikeda is a world renowned clinician in functional vision with decades of experience and would be happy to help you. You can schedule an eye exam for vision therapy by calling (562) 925-6591 .