Patient Care

Amsler Grid Testing

An Amsler grid is a useful tool for monitoring your central visual field. It is an important way to detect early and sometimes subtle visual changes in a variety of macular diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema. It is also helpful in monitoring changes in vision once they have been detected. With the Amsler grid, each eye is tested separately by you. This helps you to recognize visual symptoms which are in one eye only.

This simple screening test is used to assess the macula (the center of the retina).  The Amsler Grid consists of evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines printed on black or white paper.  A small dot is located in the center of the grid for fixation.  While staring at the dot, the patient looks for wavy lines and missing areas of the grid.   This test is especially helpful for monitoring vision at home.

The iris is very similar to the shutter of a camera.  When you take a picture on a bright sunny day, the shutter becomes smaller, allowing less light to enter.  Likewise, your pupil becomes smaller when we shine a bright light at your eye, making it very difficult to peer inside.  That’s where the dilating drops come in.

Dilating drops work on one of two principles:  they either stimulate the iris muscle that opens the pupil (the dilator), or prevent action of the iris muscle that closes the pupil (the sphincter).  After the drops take effect, your doctor can get a much better view of your retina, optic nerve and vessels in the back of the eye.  This is a very important part of your preventive eye care as well as some eye surgeries.  With this simple step, we are able to gather a lot of important information about your eyes.  In fact, some systemic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes are first discovered during the dilated eye exam.