How to Read a Eye Galsses Prescription

Understanding your prescription

What do the letters, numbers and symbols on my prescription mean?

Apart from your proper noun and engagement of birth, y'all will notice that there are quite a few letters, numbers and symbols on your prescription. This is what they all hateful:

'+' or '-'

'+' – Shows if you lot are long sighted (longsightedness)

'-' – Shows if you lot are short sighted (shortsightedness)

SPH or Spherical number

This shows how strong the correction needs to be. A '-' symbol above the number indicates shortsightedness whereas a '+' symbol indicates longsightedness. Other symbols that can exist institute in this section are the infinity symbol (which looks like a sideways eight) or the discussion Plano (or Pl), which are the equivalent of 'zero' and are used when no sight correction is required. Another common term that can be establish on prescriptions is 5/A (or visual vigil) which measures the standard of vision when corrected.

CYL or Cylinder number

This shows how much astigmatism you accept and the number can be negative or positive. Astigmatism is when the front office of your heart is shaped more like a rugby ball than a regular circumvolve. If you don't take an astigmatism, at that place will be no figures written in the cylinder and axis boxes.

AXIS

This shows the position of the cylinder. Information technology will be between i and 180.

PD or Pupillary distance

This is the distance between your eyes measured betwixt your pupil centre points. Usually, the optician volition non add this to your prescription, so you should inquire for it as it's important for those with high-strength prescriptions to take lenses that are centred more accurately. To inquire for your PD, yous tin can tell your optician that you volition be purchasing an item they practise non stock, such as prescription goggles online.

ADD

This volition signal if you need a prescription for reading and is applied to bifocal and varifocal lenses to correct presbyopia. You may also have an Inter Add for computers or other tasks like reading music on a stand up.

PRISM

This shows if you have a muscle imbalance in your eye. It'south less common to meet this box filled in as it'south fairly rare. The prism is usually written in fractions (for example ane ½).

Base of operations

This shows the management of the prism in your lens, for case IN, OUT, UP or Down. This is fairly uncommon and then the boxes are unremarkably empty.

You lot tin read more about different types of prescriptions here.

Common layouts of prescriptions

Beneath are examples of prescriptions. The first set are standard - look through these to get a feel. It's mostly handwritten prescriptions that crusade problems but typed ones are generally easier to understand. For each prescription, we also included how it would appear when adding information technology to our website.

At the end of the folio are examples of unusual cases you may encounter, with instructions for what to practise. Skip directly to the more unusual items.

This is a standard NHS prescription:

It would be written every bit follows:

NHS Scotland

• Hither the signs accept been written To a higher place the numbers - they are however just standard +/- signs.
• It can exist difficult to tell where one number ends and the next one begins. It helps to know that sphere and cylinder will e'er exist in the format (10)x.yy, with ten existence a number from 0 to x and yy being either 00, 25, 50 or 75. Axis is always a number between 1 and 180.

It would be written equally follows (y'all can click "My prescription is more than complex than this…" to expand the carte du jour):

Boots

It would be written as follows:

Specsavers

Information technology would be written as follows:

Vision Express

It would be written as follows:

More unusual figures

If you lot need a prism for i or both eyes, it will look similar to this:

We can provide lenses with a prism correction, but yous'll need to contact us to discuss this.

Sometimes figures like this appear on your prescription. These are not needed to make your lenses.

Some prescriptions have this figure, which looks like a sideways viii. This means 'infinity'. And you should select 'infinity' from the list.

This prescription also has some figures scrawled underneath - these are additions for both intermediate and almost distances. Even though information technology's a single figure, information technology applies to both eyes.

To enter this, y'all'll need to use the "My prescription is more circuitous than this…" link to show the more advanced prescription area.

Sometimes opticians write 'DS' in the CYL column. This simply means in that location is no astigmatism, and you can enter either nothing (leave the field blank) or select the phrase DS in the drop down.

robinsoncleferts2000.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/help/understanding-your-prescription/

Share this post