Yearly retinal imaging is very important. The doctor highly recommends retinal imaging once a year for healthy eyes, and more often if problems occur.
3 reasons to have retinal imaging
Reason 1
The eye is the only place in the body where we can see blood vessels that are not covered by skin. By looking at your blood vessels we can tell a lot about your other organs like your liver and your kidneys. Using this new technology we are able to detect problems like diabetes and high blood pressure. Your eye acts as a sample of what is going on in your body and we use this information to help your primary doctor.
Reason 2
You can have eye diseases even if you have 20/20 vision (insert the diabetes picture). A normal eye is the top picture, the circled part is the macula and this accounts for 80% of the vision including central vision. This person did not want to get imaging done because they saw well and thought they didn’t have problems. After they did it we saw a massive bleed in their eye and found out they had diabetes, and this saved their vision. We often pick up sight threatening conditions like holes and tears this way.
Reason 3
This imaging device is very high tech and gives us a great look at what is going on far into the sides of your eyes though your tiny pupil. The view is much better than we get with the microscope (see picture at the bottom of this page for comparison of different retinal examination methods). If the doctor uses the microscope to look inside your eyes she only gets to see a small area at a time and can miss things that are far out. Imaging can serve as a baseline for any changes in the future- a picture is worth 1,000 words. Sometimes having a baseline will help prevent needless misdiagnoses in the future because we can refer back to a baseline to check for stability.