HOWES & BROWN OPTOMETRISTS

Regular eye examinations are important protection for your eyesight, your ocular health and your general health. Routine general eye examination provides a vision profile that enables early detection, preventative management and treatment of vision dysfunction, ocular health problems and general health problems that reveal themselves in the visual system. Regular examination results in up to date refractive adjustment, enabling you to be safe, efficient and perform at your best. We will advise you how regularly you should be examined, but as a general guideline if you are a child , adolescent or wear contact lenses you should be examined yearly, and most adult prescription spectacle wearers should be examined every two years. 

Vision is one of our most wonderful and important gifts. In reality, it is not fully developed at birth. Development of the visual process is strongly influenced by the environment. That is, the variety of stimulation available, the demands we face and the problems we must solve in order to use our vision exert powerful influence on the direction our visual development will take. The visual process must continually develop and change throughout our lives to be at its best. Vision is not simply a thing done by the eyes. It is a complex process involving many areas of the brain. An optimally developing visual system enables the visual information processing abilities of acute discrimination, awareness, accuracy and control, with effortless imagery processing to support good memory and anticipation for action. The visual process should show good flexibility, and not be stimulus bound. Development of integration of information with other sensory systems such as hearing, proprioception and vestibular processing, will enable minimal demand on attention resources. As a dynamic process of intake and response, good visual performance must be learned and, if problems arise, can be enhanced and improved with vision therapy and/or lenses.

Vision therapy is an individualised program of planned sequential activities designed to enhance development, correct or ameliorate visual functioning.  The program works on functional and perceptual visual skills shown to be fragile during the behavioural vision assessment. Examples being:  eye movement disorders, non-strabismic binocular dysfunctions, focusing disorders, strabismus, amblyopia, nystagmus, visual perceptual (information processing) disorders, visual-vestibular dysfunction, visual efficiency for sports performance and visual sequellae of acquired brain injury. Vision-therapy programs are designed to create awareness, challenge and strengthen performance of your vision abilities. Vision therapy programs can be office-based or home-based. 

Contact lenses are thin lenses placed directly on the surface of the eye. They are considered medical devices and can be worn to correct vision, or for cosmetic or therapeutic reasons. People choose to wear contacts for many reasons. While aesthetics and cosmetics are motivating factors for people who want to avoid wearing glasses or to change the appearance of their eyes, in a Behavioural Vision Care practice, contact lenses are often recommended to help people open up the volume of space they can attend to, equalize unequal refractive status, or correct high error in refraction, to enable the visual process can develop free from the interruption of space distorting spectacles lenses that create misperception of distance, size, velocity and space.

Vision problems are among the most common and pervasive sequellae following acquired brain injury. Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation involves in depth assessment of the eyes; the visual pathways; the functional visual abilities such as fixation, tracking, focusing and eye teaming; the visual systems ability to process radiant light energy and its sensitivity to motion; visual-vestibular processing and visual perceptual information processing. Optometrists use lenses, tints, filters, prisms and a program of Optometric Vision Therapy to assist individuals identified with visual dysfunction along the path of rehabilitation.  

Howes&Brown Optometrists, Meadowbank is a specialty paediatric practice who through post-graduate clinical education, training, and experience provide effective primary eye and vision services for children.  Examination procedures include evaluation of eyesight, eye health, the developmental status of functional vision abilities such as fixation and tracking, focusing, eye teaming, depth perception and eye hand coordination, along with the developmental status of visual perceptual skills for information processing, thinking and learning. Annual assessment of your child's vision is recommended to reduce the risk of developmental vision loss, enable early detection of vision dysfunction and facilitate normal visual development.