Until recently, optometrists were considered good for just one thing: prescribing glasses for the visually impaired. Today, optometry is a health profession that has come of age and plays an ever-increasing and vital role in primary eye care.

The ascendancy of optometry as a profession owes its success to rigorous and demanding training in optometric colleges and universities, modern technological advances that have contributed to the expansion of the scope of practice of optometry, and the burgeoning awareness that optometry is at the vanguard of primary eye care. But the full range of optometric practice is not yet fully known by the general public. This, however, is about to change as many eye hospitals have realized the importance of optometrist.

The old optometry was limited almost exclusively to fitting eyeglasses, where as today’s optometrists examine, diagnose, treat and manage diseases of the eye. In addition to providing treatments such as contact lenses, corrective and low vision devices, optometrists today are authorized to use diagnostic and therapeutic pharmaceutical agents to treat anterior segment disease, glaucoma, and ocular hypertension in developed countries.

As primary eye care practitioners, optometrists often are the first ones to detect such potentially serious conditions as diabetes, hypertension and arteriosclerosis. In fact, today optometrists work closely with ophthalmologists, neurologists, psychologists and other health care practitioners. Except for invasive procedures, the line between optometry and ophthalmology has become increasingly blurred and the two professions are gradually developing a symbiotic-if not sympathetic-relationship.

As with medicine, optometry offers a variety of areas of specialization. Practitioners wishing to focus in areas other than general practice may select such specialties as contact lenses, vision therapy and orthoptics, pediatrics, low vision, sports vision, head trauma, learning disabilities and occupational vision. Optometrists may and often concentrate on one or two specialty areas of optometry.