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Caring for your eyes is as easy as visiting an optometrist once a year. If you don’t have a regular optometrist that you see, ask your physician if they can recommend one. If they do not, you could take advice from friends or look in the yellow pages. When you go to your visit the first thing that will be done is a full medical history. Once the history is taken, the optometrist then continues with normal tests performed at each initial eye exam. The first test performed is the visual acuity exam. This just determines how well you see different sized things from a specific distance. You would be asked to look at different sized letters from across the room. If you can’t see the letters the optometrist may place different lenses in front of your eyes to determine whether you need corrective lenses. A refraction test is only done if you need corrective lenses. This is done usually at the same time with the different lenses. The next test finds out whether you have any blind spots. This is called the perimetry test. This is done by focusing one eye into the center on a large dish that is covered with small lights that blink in various places while the other eye is covered. You click on a button everytime you see a light. The eye exam itself requires the optometrist to look into your eyes to check the eye muscles and to look for any abnormalities. He/she will then dilate your pupils to look at your retina. Some offices actually take a picture of the retina to keep on file. The last test performed is the glaucoma test. A puff of air is blown into the eye and the eye reaction is measured to obtain the eye pressure.