Optometry Equipment

As first year Optometry students, we purchase quite a bit of equipment that we will be using for the next 3 years and probably as we enter our careers as well. Although it is expensive, we get a 50% student discount from the normal retail price. Even with that discount, most of us spent between $2,000 and $3,000! And we still have to order a few things next year... This year I got 2 cases to transport all the equipment. One is smaller and mainly fits our trial lens set. The other is a larger rolling case that can carry the trial lens set plus a lot of other equipment. They both have the Indiana University logo on them. You can see the trial lens set which has over 200 lenses in it that we use to determine a patient's prescription. The next picture shows some of the smaller random things that we had to get including occluders to cover one eye, cards used for targets and to test reading acuities, and the clear long things off to the left are prism bars which are used to measure if a patient has an eye turn or drift. The next picture shows a close up of a three lens set that we use in combination with a piece of equipment called a slit lamp. With the lenses you can get very magnified views of the retina and other structures in the back of the eye. In the last picture you see more equipment in the rolling case. Here are books used to test for color vision, and stereopsis (depth perception with both eyes working together). There are also various glasses with red/green lenses, polarized lenses and gray lenses for different tests.





















Another major portion of our equipment costs went toward our diagnostic set. This is shown in the left picture. It has a direct ophthalmoscope (upper right) which is used to view structures inside the eye, a retinoscope (bottom) which is used to estimate a patient's prescription, and a PanOptic (left) which is used like the opthalmoscope, but provides a wider view with less magnification and is great for kids. This set came with chargers for the handles that plug into the wall as well as a desk charger set. Finally, we had to purchase a stethoscope, sphygmomanometer (blood pressure meter) and cuffs. Surprisingly, it is important for optometrists to check the blood pressure of their patients, mainly because the medication used to dilate eyes can cause problems if the blood pressure is elevated. Now that I have all the equipment, it is time to practice! Most of the time we practice on other students, but if anyone feels like driving to Bloomington to be a practice patient...