JUNE 2014

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Your monthly guide to staff training outside the box

Eyes / Lenses / Fitting Lenses / Free-Form / Frames / Sunwear / Patient Solutions / In-office / Standards

FREE-FORM, Digital
Measurement Systems

WHY PICTURES FOR PDs?

Essilor Visioffice, frame reference device

By Barry Santini, ABOM

Did you grow up with the millimeter ruler as a familiar and essential part of your dispensing toolbox? I did. But it is that familiar need to reach for a ruler that must be challenged for your patients to realize the most from today’s advanced digitally surfaced lenses.

Using simple binocular measurements and overlooking the need for taking monocular pupil heights for every pair of eyewear will diminish your client’s enjoyment of advanced and expensive lenses. More importantly, you are shortchanging your client from experiencing how your practice is advancing into the 21st century as well. Let’s review the advantages of taking typical eyewear measurements through the magic of a digital photograph:

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A BIT OF BACKGROUND

Pupillometers appear more accurate than millimeter rulers, and digital centration devices appear more accurate than pupillometers. But before you ditch your PD ruler, remember that the ruler and manual measurements will always play an important role in an ECP’s toolkit. Both objective and subjective verification and troubleshooting of prescription eyewear will continue to require expertise in the use of ruler and pen.

Because of this, some practitioners prefer to use an enhanced manual method, which employs a mirror to subjectively determine the visual axis at the spectacle plane. Each method has to consider variables that may impact accuracy and efficacy.

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WITHOUT DIGITAL MEASUREMENTS

As the pantoscopic and/or face-form tilt of the lens in the position of wear increases, optical performance deteriorates because of oblique astigmatism due to lens tilt. The figure illustrates how the power changes as tilt changes. The result is a lens whose effective powers become farther and farther from the prescribed powers. An understanding of these issues becomes an opportunity to deliver a better solution by better wavefront management and the correct instruments in office to measure them.

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FAST ACQUISITION OF THE BASIC MEASUREMENTS

Barry Santini, ABOM

When you end up being really slammed on a busy Saturday, a digital centration device can be a savior. It allows almost any staff member to quickly obtain monocular PDs, pupil heights, pantoscopic tilt, vertex distance and frame wrap in but a few seconds.

Clients will innately view the use of Digital Centration Devices as a measure of your commitment to using the latest technology, and the halo effect from employing them in your practice should not be understated.

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