“What is a dilated eye exam?”

A dilated eye exam uses special drops to temporarily widen the pupil, enabling your eye doctor to examine the retina, optic nerve, and other internal eye structures for signs of disease or damage. Since dilation may cause temporary blurred vision, glare, and light sensitivity, bringing sunglasses and arranging a driver are recommended.

A dilated examination is when dilating drops are instilled into both eyes and after an adequate period of time, typically 20-30 minutes, the pupils expand adequately to allow visualization of the central and peripheral retinal nerve tissue and optic nerve heads. This is very important for ensuring that there are no peripheral retinal tears in myopic individuals, that are typically not visible without dilatation. The drops completely relax the iris muscles not only expanding the size of the pupil but also preventing contraction when bright lights are focused on the retina. The drops typically wear off over 4-6 hours.

We use drops to make the pupil larger so that we can examine the interior of the eye known as the retina and vitreous. One can see the optic nerve, arteries, veins, masses, hemorrhages, leaks, and several other things, including subretinal, fluid leaks or hemorrhages, which are common in wet macular degeneration. I dilate every single patient who has diabetes or hypertension so that you can look to see if there's any damage to the retina as a result. It's also used in inflammations of the interior of the eye no uveitis of course this is not a complete listing. The simple explanation is if a door is closed and you want to see what's on the other side of the door in a room for example you want to open the door so that you can look that's dilation

A dilated eye exam is part of an eye exam. Dilating eye drops are placed into each eye in order for the iris not to constrict when a bright light is shined into the eye. The dilated eye exam allows the eye doctor to fully view the full anatomy of the retina, optic nerve, lens, angle, and vitreous. When a light is shined into the eyes, the iris and the pupil constrict (get smaller), making the viewing area much smaller. The dilating drops prevent the pupil from constricting. These drops can last from 1 -3 hours making your eyes blurry and light sensitive. So, bring a driver and bring sunglasses. Good luck and best wishes.