What is the difference between direct and indirect ophthalmoscopy?
FEB 21, 2024
Question:
What is the difference between direct and indirect ophthalmoscopy?
Answer:
Ophthalmoscopy is the act of looking at the inside of the eye.
Ophthalmoscopy should be a part of every comprehensive eye examination. With ophthalmoscopy your ophthalmologist can find evidence of many kinds of eye problems including glaucoma, high blood pressure damage, retinal detachment, diabetes, eye tumors, and many other problems. The handheld instrument that your primary care physician uses to look into your eyes is called a direct ophthalmoscope. It provides good but limited visualization of the back of the eye. The viewer must be very close to the face of the patient. The indirect ophthalmoscope is mounted on the head of the viewer and a condensing lens is held close to the eye. The viewer is about arms-length away from the patient. It provides the viewer a much wider field of vision of the back of the eye and the view shows elevation and depth like 3D. Almost all eye examinations by ophthalmologists today use indirect ophthalmoscopy.
This question was originally answered on Sept. 2, 2016.