As part of National Eye Health awareness week Specsavers across south Devon are highlighting how an eye examination could save your sight some cases your life.
Megan Turner, 22, had been suffering debilitating headaches for months. She had seen specialists, but they could find nothing wrong. She booked an appointment for an eye test at the Exeter Specsavers store, where the optometrist noticed that Megan’s optic nerve was badly swollen.
She was urgently referred to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, where they found that Megan had intracranial hypertension, which is a build-up of pressure around the brain. This can be the result of a severe head injury, stroke or brain abscess, but for Megan there was no known cause.
Megan, said: ‘I’m extremely grateful to Specsavers. I’d been looking for answers for my headaches for months. If I hadn’t gone for my eye test, it could have ended very differently for me. I could have lost my vision completely – or even died. Following my urgent referral I had numerous procedures to reduce the pressure on my brain, which has essentially saved my life’.
During this years’ National eye health week, Specsavers is hoping cases like Meghan’s will encourage more people to recognise the importance of regular eye examinations. It recommends that everyone should have an eye test at least once every two years, and more often if there are any changes to your vision or eyes.
Scott McGowan, the store’s ophthalmic director said: ‘It’s heartening to see that by keeping up with her routine eye tests, our optometrist was able to pick up the early signs of Megan’s condition and could refer her for treatment at an early stage. I hope that stories like Megan’s encourage others to keep up with their regular eye health checks as part of their sight test – because not everyone realises that the sight test is more than just whether you need glasses or not’.
Your eyes can reveal a lot about your health so it’s really important to have regular eye tests – once every two years, or more often if recommended by your optometrist.
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