COMPREHENSIVE EYE EXAM
Annual exams are a necessary part of your total health care. Changes in the measurement of your eyes can be a sign of illness, such as diabetes. Prescriptions change due to age. Thorough exams by a qualified doctor can detect subtle changes. Good eye health begins with routine eye exams, and should start as early as 6 months of age.
TREATMENT OF EYE DISEASES
Dr. Gording was among the first optometrists in California to receive a therapeutic license. His years of experience in a large surgical group assure you that your treatment will be accurate and complete. Treatments include eye drops and oral medications when necessary. Often times, a change in lid hygiene or a recommendation for vitamins is all that is required.
CHILDREN'S EXAM
Dr. Gording completed an internship at the Gesell Institute. Children's exams are very different than adult exams. These exams include monitoring developmental milestones that can be crucial to a child's ability to read and learn. Since young children are not fully aware of symptoms, every child should be examined yearly. Unfortunately, most of the test that we perform are not available through your pediatrician.
ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
Advanced technology allows us to diagnose a wide range of conditions of the eye. We can magnify and stabilize a view of the eye without any discomfort to you. It allows us to analyze layers of the retina, the optic nerve, and the macula. It creates images for comparisons for future exams. We have made a big commitment to these instruments to insure that you receive the best care possible. In the future, all eye doctors will have these instruments. They will become the standard of care. Our mission statement is to give you the best quality eye care possible. Technology is what will drive eye care in this century. It's here now at Dr. Gording, Optometry.
CONTACT LENSES
Dr. Gording is a well known national leader in the prescribing of special effect contact lenses for film and television. This specialty developed out his ability to fit lenses on a wide range of corneal conditions while part of a surgical group. Couple that experience with his persistence, and you will see why so many people come back year after year for all of their contact lens needs. Dr. Gording fits soft lenses for astigmatism and bifocal soft lenses. People who have been unable to wear contact lenses in the past have been successfully fit in our office. In addition, we fit custom tinted lenses that can be tinted or custom hand painted to achieve a wide range of effects. They can be made to look like a natural eye for people who have had an injury that may have caused a disfigurement.
KERATOCONUS
This is a progressive corneal dystrophy that conventional lenses or contacts cannot correct. Special contact lenses are required. Dr Gording's many years working with corneal specialists qualifies him as an expert in this field who can fit these lenses successfully.
REFRACTIVE SURGERY
In coordination with a corneal specialist, we assist in pre and post operative treatment. Dr. Gording has personally benefited from refractive surgery.
COMPUTER VISION SYNDROME
has become a serious vision concern that affects millions of people. Dr Gording was one of the first consultants to other eye doctors, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, to provide the right tests to get the right results.
THERAPUETIC CONTACT LENSES
Prosthetic Contact Lenses
Prosthetic contact lenses are made to cover an eye that has been disfigured due to trauma, disease, or birth defect. They can also be used to limit the amount of light entering the eye but still allow enough light to allow the patient to see. Dr. Gording specializes in the prescribing of soft contact lenses for these purposes. They are typically the size of standard soft lenses, but they can be made larger to cover a wider area. A standard soft lens has a diameter of between 14 and 15 mm. Larger soft lenses, referred to as scleral lenses because they fit farther out over peripheral sclera, can be used to cover large defects, such as a Nevus of Ota. In a case where the patient's own eye is pointed in different direction in relation to their other eye, we can produce a scleral lens with a hand painted eye looking straight ahead and white covering the actual eye, thus creating the effect of both eyes looking straight ahead. Below is an example of a HAND PAINTED CONTACT LENS
Patient with strabismus and wearing hand painted scleral contact lenses from SCL Contact Lenses.
The lenses can be simply tinted. This works particularly well in a situation where the patient has a brown iris in their good eye and a corneal scar in their disfigured eye. The dark brown tint can cover the scar making it look normal. Additionally, we add a black dot in the center of the lens to give it the appearance of a pupil. This may be a less expensive option than a hand painted lens. Below is an example of CUSTOM TINTED PROSTHETIC LENS
Patient has a corneal scar in the left eye and wearing a tinted soft lens with a black dot in the center.
Hand painted lenses or printed lenses can more accurately appear like the fellow eye. This is more often true in lighter colored eyes. They are generally more expensive, but the results can be quite dramatic. Prosthetic lenses can have a clear center that allows light to enter the eye and thereby allow the patient to see, or can be completely opaque. It can sometimes be preferred over the hard scleral shells for a totally blind eye. Many years ago, there were only hard contact lenses. They were often very comfortable, but many people found them too uncomfortable to wear. In the same way, a soft prosthetic lens can be considerably more comfortable than a hard scleral shell.
Blind patient wearing soft lenses instead of hard shells.
A prosthetic lens can be used to limit the amount of light that enters the eye. This can be a great help for people who have an irregular iris. The lens can have a black ring which the limits the light, or it can be simply tinted.
ChromaGen Lenses
ChromaGen is a unique and proprietary system of colored filters that are used to change the wavelength of light entering the eye. These FDA cleared filters have two applications:
1. Treatment Option for Dyslexia The diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia is a complicated and sometimes lengthy process. Sometimes, the cause can be a misalignment of the eyes, meaning that they don't look at the same image at the same time. Other times, an undetected focusing insufficiency can be at the root of reading problems. Treatment can be in the form of glasses to correct subtle problems. Alternatively, treatments can include various forms of therapy, such as vision therapy, or "eye exercises" which can be done on a computer. Some patients require in-office sessions. These exercises can take weeks or months before any results are seen. Sometimes, the visual problems can be a symptom of other neurological problems and therefore are appropriately treated by other specialists.
Recently, it has been shown that for many sufferers, ChromGen lenses can immediately enjoy relief from the myriad of symptoms of dyslexia. A simple 15 minute in-office test can demonstrate who will benefit from these lenses. The results can be immediate and dramatic.
2. Treatment Option for Color Deficiencies It is estimated that 5% of the world population have some form of color vision deficiency. The ChromaGen haploscopic filters alter the wavelength of light going into each eye in a dynamically balanced format which enhances color perception.* These filters can be in the form of glasses or contact lenses. Dr. Gording was among the first doctors in the United States to prescribe ChromaGen.
*Note to candidates for military, police, or fire academies. ChromaGen is not intended to assist candidates with color deficiencies pass a color vision test and thereby gain entrance into the academy.
Therapeutic Contact Lenses
This group of lenses includes hard and soft contact lenses that cover an irregular cornea. The cornea needs to be smooth and symmetrical to afford good vision. Corneas can become distorted due to a variety of diseases and degenerative conditions, such as in keratoconus. Or, the cornea may have become scarred form disease or trauma. Unfortunately, a rare cornea condition occurs after refractive surgery that causes the cornea to become distorted. These can often be addressed with a variety of gas permeable hard lenses. Lens designs like the McGuire Lens, the Rose K, the reverse geometry, and the scleral lenses are all used to address these conditions.
In these case, patients cannot see well with conventional glasses and contact lenses are the only option, Dr. Gording has been able to successfully fit lenses for patients who would have otherwise required a corneal transplant.
This category of contact lenses can sometimes be identified as medically necessary contact lenses by some insurance carriers. Usually, the criteria of "medically necessary" means that the best corrected vision in the affected eye is 20/70 or worse with glasses.
