Understand and know how to read his ophthalmological prescription

Going to an ophthalmologist is not an easy process. For several reasons, such as vision disorders, inflammation of the eye, eye pain and others. We surrender ophthalmologist for medical consultation and eye examination. After this act, the eye specialist often prescribes a prescription for glasses and/or eye lenses. 

It is important to know how to read and understand the latter for an optician in order to adapt the mount perfectly to correction and morphology. However, this task is quickly esoteric for an individual. It is then to facilitate you the task that we give you all the secrets to decipher in no time, your ophthalmo prescription.

Presentation of an ophthalmological prescription

Like all prescriptions, the ophthalmological one has the same configuration. It is a paper divided into two main parts:

• Header;
• and the corrections themselves.

Depending on the doctor's office, their presentation may vary. The document is entered or handwritten, and in the latter case the writing should be decryptable enough to facilitate reading.

The heading of the prescription

This is the top part of the document. It contains various information on:

• The date;
• The name of the office or hospital;
• The identity of the applicant doctor or service;
• Name and first name of patient;

The role of the header is to reassure the optician or pharmacist on the origin of the prescription. It is following this part from the top down that we find the mention « MEDICAL ORDER ». You can observe some variants on other formats. In all cases, it leads to the content of the requirement itself.

The requirement itself

This section contains all the treatments prescribed by the eye doctor for the management of your condition. Its presentation varies greatly from one health centre to another. It includes, inter alia:

• Names of medicines: These are trade names or international common names (INNs). They are normally highlighted when they are handwritten;
• Galenic form or presentation in pharmacy;
• Doses: they are expressed in mg for the most part or in percentage for some;
• The quantity of each medicine to be purchased;
• Dose: This is how treatment is taken. It is indicated in each prescription and carefully written with all possible details. Physicians often do this to ensure that patients are well understood.

In the particular case of glasses, the pattern is a little different. Here, the doctor prescribes only optical lenses and adds all the additional information. These include:

• The type of lenses prescribed: unifocal, field depth or progressive (sometimes tinted or therapeutic) lenses;
• Whether or not there is a mount;
• The characteristics of each eye both for far vision and close vision: they are in the form of numerical data affected by positive (+) or negative (-) signs;
• Adding;
• Pupil gap.

According to the law of consumption of 18 September 2014, the measurement of the pupil deviations must be carried out by the ophthalmologist and note on the prescription. This helps secure the purchase of eyeglasses on the Internet. Learn more about best online eyeglass sites, check our file.

It should be noted that, at the end of all this information, the doctor signs it to certify its authenticity.

How to read and understand the prescription?

Reading a prescription focuses on the various prescriptions mentioned by the caregiver. It takes into account the nature of the prescription which, in turn, depends on your disorder. A prescription for a single medicine is therefore not read the same way as a bezel.

Some common abbreviations

Very often, for temporal constraints, doctors opt for abbreviations specific to the medical profession. We need to know them so that the reading goes smoothly. These include:

• « VL » : vision from afar
• « VP » : close vision
• « VI » : intermediate vision
• « SPH » : sphere
• « CYL » : cylinder
• « GDO » : right eye and left eye
• « OD » : right eye
• « OG » : left eye
• « Add » : addition
• « EP » : Pupil gap or half pupil gap

Understand its correction and visual defects

For prescriptions for optical lenses, the reading is totally different, because of the information that is present on the prescription. Let's take another typical example:

On this prescription it can be read that it is a pair of glasses with mount. The lenses must be «progressive». Still referred to as multifocal lenses, progressive lenses correct several visual disorders, including Presbytery. It is important for the physician to specify the nature of the glasses that depends on the type of patient's vision disorder.

What about the inscriptions in front of each eye? These are the precise characteristics that each glass must possess according to the eye. They read as follows:

• +0.50 : corresponds to the power of the eye expressed in diopters. The (+) sign translates hypermetropy and the sign (-) translates the Myopia ;
• (-1.50) and (+1.00) corresponding to the value of Astigmatism for each eye;
• 20° and 60° : designate the axis of astigmatism for the right eye and the left eye respectively.

Laddition is a complementary information that corresponds to the measure in dioptries of the presbytery (close view). As regardsPupil gapThis is the distance between the centre and each of your pupils. The healthcare professional, i.e. the optician, will need to measure half the pupil gap because the majority of people are not perfectly symmetrical.

It is advisable for the acquisition of glasses to give prescription or optician back to read it itself. This avoids possible errors that may disrupt the correction of the visual disorder. These specialists are well trained to understand every detail on the order. They will take them into account to provide you with the glasses that suit you.

Astigmatism

Astigmatism is a visual defect where your eye is not completely round.

Ideally, the eyeball has the shape of a perfectly round ball. The light penetrates and curves evenly, making it clear. On the other hand, if your eye is shaped like a rugby ball, the light is more distorted in one direction than in another. This means that only part of the object is developed. Objects at a certain distance may seem blurred and distorted.

It is common to suffer from astigmatism along with myopia or hypermetropy. These three pathologies are called Refraction defects For they concern the way your eyes bow (refractent) the light.

Astigmatism is fairly easy to correct by an ophthalmologist with glasses, lenses or surgical procedure.

Symptoms of astigmatism may include:

• A blurred or distorted vision
• Eye fatigue
• Headache
• Difficulties at night

Myopia

You must have difficult to see distant objects, like highway signs, until you're a few meters away, but you're easily reading a book? You're probably myopic. This is a fairly common disorder that your eye doctor can usually correct with glasses, contact lenses or eye surgery.

The structure of your eye causes myopia in relation to normal vision. When your eyeball is too long or the cornea – the outer protective layer of your eye – is too curved, the light that enters your eye does not focus properly. The images concentrate in front of the retina, the part sensitive to the light of your eye, instead of focusing directly on the retina. This leads to blurred vision. Doctors call this a refraction defect.

Symptoms of myopia:

• headache
• eye creaking
• Eye fatigue
• Eye fatigue when you try to see objects more than a few meters away.

Myopic children often find it difficult to read the blackboard at school.

Hypermetropy

Hypermetropy occurs when you see objects far away better than objects close by. Your eyes focus more on distant objects than on near objects.

Children with mild to moderate hypermetropy can see closely as far away without glasses, as the muscles and lens (crystalline) of their eyes can very well adapt and correct the hypermetropy.

Causes of hypermetropy
Your eyes concentrate light rays and send the image of what you look at to your brain. When you are hypermetropic, the light rays are not focused as they should.

The cornea, the transparent outer layer of your eye, and the lens focus images directly on the surface of your retina, which lines the bottom of your eye. If your eye is too short, or if the focus power is too weak, the image will go to the wrong place, behind your retina. That's what makes things blurry.

Symptoms of hypermetropy:

• difficulties in developing near objects;
• headache
• blurred vision
• Eye fatigue
• fatigue or headache after performing a close task, such as reading.

Presbytery

From quarantine, it becomes more difficult to see closely, but you can see very well from a distance. It's called presbytery. Despite his name, it is not a disease. It is a natural part of the aging process. And it's easy to correct.

Presbytery is often confused with hypermetropy, but both are different. Presbytery occurs when the eye lens loses its flexibility. The hypermetropy is due to a deformation of the eyeball which results in a poor focus of light rays once they have penetrated the eye.

You will notice these symptoms:

• you must keep your book, reader or portable at arm's length;
• blurred vision at a normal reading distance;
• headache or fatigue during close work.

How long is an opthalmo order valid?

• If you are under 16 years of age On the date of the consultation, the ophthalmological prescription is valid only one year.
• If between 16 and 42 years of age, the requirement is valid for 5 years. The optician will be able to perform a visual examination to check or adjust the correction if your view has changed under the strict agreement of your opthalmo.
• If you have over 42 years, the order is valid for 3 years.

The ophthalmologist may specify on the prescription of glasses that it is not renewable in the case of precise medical follow-up.

Make an appointment with an opthalmologist

You want to get a ophthalmologist appointment for eye surgery, follow-up consultation, prescription of glasses, lenses, routine examination or further examination. There are websites that provide this service and that offer you the opthalmological centres or opthalmologists closest to you, their telephone contact details, emails, their actions and examinations that fit their skills and their rates.

Some ophalmologists are more able to perform refractive surgery (correcting a visual defect), others of cataract, retina or glaucoma surgery, and some opthalmos only perform eye examinations and prescriptions of glasses and lenses.

In some ophthalmological centres, optometrists perform visual checks and lens renewals prior to consultation with the ophthalmo. This makes it possible to reduce the number of appointments made by a specialist in France and thus shorten the deadlines before an appointment.

Sometimes you need an opthalmological emergency, we invite you in this case to contact the nearest eyelid that will be better able to direct you to a confree or a consoeur if it is not available.