…..one minute read…..
It came to our attention lately that we talk in technical terms a lot. For most of us, the annual visit to the optometrist or ophthalmologist is the only time we hear terms like myopia, glaucoma, refraction, and such. We don’t have the benefit of an on-going narrative regarding eye health such as we do with medical and legal information in the forms of ER and Law & Order. After eight years of those shows NBC has made us all experienced triage RNs and judges, or ER docs and prosecutors. We jest.
But sadly there is no show about humanitarian efforts for vision care around the world – or at least we don’t know of one – so when we start talking about solving URE like some organizations have tackled Trauchoma, you may not know that we are talking about uncorrected refractive error (URE) and an awful bacterial disease that causes one’s eyelids to fold in on the eyeball.
So, here’s a nifty visual that may remind you of high school anatomy class. And it shows you the basic reason most of us wear spectacles, what we call near (Myopia) and farsightedness (Hyperopia).
And here is a link to a one pager link from NIH explaining the basics of refractive error: https://nei.nih.gov/health/errors/errors with a basic illustration of the eye.
And count your lucky stars, because for most of us we end up heading to one of these
if we have refractive error and the full eye exam helps determine if we have any other ailments.