Most people think when they're coming into the eye exam, they're just coming in for their glasses or contact lenses. But it is so much more than that. There are a lot of very serious health conditions that the first place that we're going to detect those things is your eyes.

Your eyes are the only place that we can look directly at blood vessels without using any type of invasive procedures.

One of the big things that we can catch is diabetes. Diabetes just means high blood sugar. So in patients with diabetes, those blood vessels on the inside of their eyes get damaged because of that high blood sugar, and that causes them to leak.

So, when I look inside of your eyes, I see little spots of blood throughout the back of your eye. A lot of patients come in that don't know they have diabetes, and we see these spots of blood and we send them out to get tested. And it turns out that they do.

And this is very serious because if you have bleeding in the back of your eye, you likely have bleeding in your brain and your kidneys right throughout your body, and that bleeding causes damage over time, and it can cause organs eventually to fail.

So, diabetes is very serious, and it's something that we can catch very early on just

by looking inside of your eyes.

In patients with high blood pressure, the blood vessels kind of appear straightened, and they can pinch and block specific areas. Also, they can cause very specific types of leakage. They cause something called cotton wool spots, which are these fuzzy inflammation areas on the retina.

And, you know, if we catch someone with high blood pressure and we see that on their eyes, we get them sent out, if we get their blood pressure under control, it can save their life. Because patients with high blood pressure are at a really high risk of developing things like stroke or heart attack.

So. in patients with high cholesterol, it can show up inside or outside the eye. They get these yellow fatty lumps around the edges of their eyelids that can be an indication of high cholesterol. Some patients get a ring around the outside of the cornea or the clear part of their eye that can also indicate high cholesterol.

And then when we look inside, we look at those blood vessels branching, and we could see little deposits of cholesterol. And, and sometimes they can actually be in the blood vessel, which, you know, if that moves down the bloodstream, the next place that the eye connects to is the brain. So that could directly lead to a stroke. So, it’s really important for us to look for those things when you come in for your eye exam.

These are just three of so many different conditions and diseases that we can catch when you come in for your routine eye exam. The earlier we catch these things, the

greater chance we have of fixing them or keeping them from getting worse.

So that's why it's so important to come in for your routine eye exam.

About EyeMed

EyeMed Vision Care is a leader in vision benefits.1 We deliver stand-out vision benefits, and an outstanding member experience across America’s largest vision network.2 EyeMed is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Learn more at eyemed.com.

  1. EyeMed internal book of business, 2023.
  2. Based on the EyeMed Insight network and analysis of competitors’ largest networks via competitor data, 2024