subject: Several Tests Confirming the Keratoconus Diagnosis [print this page] Several Tests Confirming the Keratoconus Diagnosis
As an eye disease, Keratoconus has affected lives of many people. Therefore, it is significant for you to ask for examination and evaluation from eye doctors or professors. To confirm the diagnosis, you need to tell everything that may relate to Keratoconus, including your history, family history, your work and living habits etc., because any one of them is possible to be one of the reasons contributing to Keratoconus. In addition, your vision complaints constitutes a crucial factor for them to understand better the possibility for you to suffer such an eye disease.
Of course, accurate checkups are needed to further confirm the diagnosis. First, the ophthalmologist or optometrist will give you tests to check your visual acuity. It is a common test in which you will be asked to read letters from an eye chart. And then comes to the Keratoconus diagnosis. There are several test concerned.
Retinoscopy is one of the tests confirming Keratoconus. When a light is focused on the retina, if the reflex or reflection can be observed. It is a sign of Keratoconus; but when there is a scissor reflex, another test, usually a cornea ultrasound(Pachymetry), will be needed for the confirmation. Keratoconus patients usually have thin corneas.
A slit lamp, or Microscope, can be used in the Keratoconus confirmation as well. If there are yellow-brown or olive-green rings, the patients are probably one of sufferers of Keratoconus. The yellow-brown or olive-green rings, also referred as Fleischer ring, can be seen in 50% of the patients with Keratoconus. They are caused by Iron Oxide Hemosiderin that is deposit in the Cornea Epithelium. Other symptoms of Keratoconus include fines lines or stress lines caused by stretching. They appear on the front of the cornea; and munson's sign, which is a V-shaped indentation. When the patients moves their line of sight in the downward direction, the V-shaped indentation can be observed in the lower eyelid. The muson's sign is a symptom which would appear in the later stage of Keratoconus, therefore it is seldom used for diagnosing keratoconus.
Keratoconus is a complex and intractable eye disease. Sometimes it can not be confirmed by merely one test and several ones are needed, because some symptoms of other eye disease would appear to be similar to that of Keratoconus. Find a professional to get your eyes checked, so that the diagnosis would be accurately confirmed.
