Health: Regular eye exams can save your life

When Stephanie Dagenais went for an eye exam five days after her 17th birthday, she didn't expect anything out of the ordinary. The Ottawa teen had been wearing glasses to correct her nearsightedness since the age of 12, and she figured this would be just a routine check up. She certainly didn't expect that by the day's end, she would be in the emergency room being investigated for a brain tumour.

"The doctor started the exam, but then he stopped and looked at me as if he was seeing a ghost," she recalls. "He said there was swelling in the back of my eye and that he wasn't comfortable doing the test and that I should go right away to the hospital."

Dagenais went straight from her optometrist's office to Ottawa General Hospital, where she was immediately admitted for a CAT scan.

"Afterward, I went into the waiting room and the doctor came in and said, 'You have a ball on your brain.' That's what he called it, 'a ball.'"

Within three days, that 'ball' was determined to be a brain tumour and within 10 days of the start of her ordeal, Dagenais went under the knife to have it removed.

"When I had my first MRI after the surgery, I asked (my surgeon) what would have happened if I hadn't gone to my optometrist that day and he said I would have had about two weeks to live," says Dagenais, who is now 19 and healthy.

While cases like Dagenais's are both extreme and rare, eye doctors say they underscore the importance of routine eye exams - even for people with normal eyesight. According to a recent poll commissioned by the Canadian Association of Optometrists, 57 per cent of Canadians aged 18 and older believe that eye exams are only necessary for people with existing eye problems and 40 per cent said they would only book an appointment if they had a particular issue. The poll, which included some 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and older, was conducted by Leger Marketing and is considered accurate within +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Those are exactly the beliefs the association is trying to change, with a campaign encouraging Canadians to make eye exams part of their preventative health regimens.

"Everybody needs an eye exam," says Calgary-based optometrist Dr. Tanya Lambden. "Even if you have clear vision, only a regular eye exam can ensure that your eyes are healthy. There are many different diseases that we can rule out in an eye exam that may not have any other signs or symptoms but can result in permanent damage."

In Dagenais's case, her only symptom was headaches, but her family doctor wasn't concerned because they tend to be common among teenage girls. "Honestly, no one ever suspected a thing," she says.

Lambden says a catch like this is something an optometrist might find "once in a lifetime, if that." But she notes that routine eye exams can detect conditions like glaucoma and macular degeneration before they run the risk of permanent vision impairment.

"Serious eye disease can come without warning or symptoms," she cautions, adding that eye exams should be done annually during childhood, every one to two years from the ages of 19 to 65 and once a year after age 65. "If you have a strong family history for problems or you're at particularly high risk, they might recommend even more often," she says.

Conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes as well as nearsightedness can increase the risk of glaucoma, for example.

Eye exams can also rule out other problems. One recent study found that five per cent of school-age children suffer from an eye problem called convergence insufficiency, which results in difficulties seeing things at close range. Because this condition makes reading difficult, many young sufferers are misdiagnosed with attention deficit disorder. With an eye exam, the disorder is easy to detect and easy to treat.

"This was a big wake-up call," Dagenais says of her experience. "My friends all got eye checkups after that. For some it was their first time ever."

It took Dagenais four or five months to recover from her surgery and she was able to graduate from high school a year after her friends. Today, she says, the only lasting effect is a difficulty putting her thoughts into words. "I can think of what I want to say but it's hard for it to come out," she says.

Her focus these days, she says, is just on enjoying life and spending time with friends and family. "Now that I know how much things can change in a day, I live to the fullest." And, she says, "I thank my optometrist for saving my life every time I go."