Today, Dr Lee had the opportunity to speak with teachers at William Dunbar PS about hidden visual problems which can impact learning. Students at this school are lucky to have a wonderful team of teachers dedicated to finding resources to help kids reach their full learning potential! They’re working hard while you kids have a day off 🙂
Wishing everyone a safe and happy family day weekend!
This week, Dr. Lee partnered with Kids2See to provide free vision screenings for JK and SK students at Secord Elementary School in Toronto. Kids2See is an initiative run by University of Toronto Med students Emily Wright, Aaron Chan and Eli Kisilevsky with the purpose of identifying children with vision impairments which require early treatment, and ensuring that they receive a complete eye exam from a qualified eye specialist further to the screening. They also strive to educate parents and school officials on the importance of routine eye exams, as 10-20% of vision problems may be missed by the screening. The school screenings only flag certain problems, so it is still important to have yearly comprehensive eye exams for complete assessment of your child’s eye health.
Kids2See will be visiting other schools weekly throughout November – January. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help out! 🙂
*No pictures of the kids due to privacy reasons
Here are great tips from Dr Dina Kulik, Pediatrician from Toronto on preparing your child for his/her first eye exam. Children should be seen at least once around age 2-3 before starting school, and the first exam can be as early as 6 months. Parents mistakenly believe that kids would complain if they couldn’t see, but they don’t because they accept it as normal.
See More at How Vision Problems Can Affect Your Child’s Abilities. (Yummy Mummy Club.ca)
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October is Children’s Vision Month in Canada, so book your eye exam today! Children are covered for one full exam per year by OHIP.
Also visit Doctors of Optometry Canada to enter for a chance to win one of five weekly prizes including an HP laptop, and a chance at the grand prize valued at over $5000!
Click here to enter the Children’s Vision Month Sweepstakes
What is the purpose of that awful air puff? If you hate doing that test, you’re definitely not alone!
The air puff test is called non-contact tonometry (NCT) and it measures the pressure inside your eyes. The machine shoots a small puff of air into your eye, and it calculates the pressure inside your eye based on how the air bounces back.
If you can’t handle that test, there are alternatives such as Goldmann tonometry (the blue light test). This involves a yellow drop which glows under blue light. The doctor will view your eyes very closely with a prism, and then the pressure can be calculated based on how the light is bent. This method is also painless, and even more accurate than the NCT.
Your eyes are filled with fluid, and if there is something causing a fluid buildup, the increased pressure can cause damage to the structures of your eye, resulting in vision loss. High pressures can be the first sign of glaucoma, or the result of other things such as injury, infection, or a tumour around the eye. There is usually no pain or symptoms with high eye pressure. It is like having high blood pressure – you won’t feel it unless it is at an unsafe level. That is why it’s important for an optometrist to do this test and measure your pressure every year. It’s a little uncomfortable but it’s over faster than a pressure cuff squeezing your arm! 🙂
Here‘s more Vision Therapy in the news!
1 in 4 students has a vision problem! 80% of what a child learns comes through vision, so a problem could prevent a child from earning the grades he/she should.
Here are some red flags:
Watch the video to hear how vision therapy helped Spencer