I’m getting new glasses and I don’t know what my vision actually is rated. I forgot to ask the doc but I have the prescription note.
The row labeled “D.V.” is divided into to subrows: “O.D.” and “O.S.” O.D. reads as, “Spherical: -875, Cylindrical +300, Axis 098.” O.S. reads as, “Spherical -175, Cylindrical +200, Axis 074.” The next row down is labled “Add” and for both subrows reads as “+100.”
Does all this actually translate to a meaningful number for me to tell people, e.g. “20/100 for left eye” or some such? Or is it just instructions for how to make my lenses?
Are you sure you’re not missing a couple of decimal points in the numbers somewhere?
I would read that prescription as:
Right eye (OD; Latin for something like “Ocular dexteris”)
-0.875 diopters, with a spherical correction of +0.3 at a 98 degree angle
Left eye (OS; sinisteris or something like that)
-1.75 diopters, spherical correction of 0.2 at an angle of 74 degrees.
Basically, it is a set of instructions on how to make your lenses, but the meaningful numbers for you are the -0.875 and the -1.75 diopter measurements.
Your right eye is about 20/28 (extrapolating from that chart) and your left is about 20/175. However, I find that most people quote their power in diopters when talking about their prescriptions, which is much easier to compare. For example, my own prescription is -5.5L, -5.75R, which makes me quite severely myopic.
Yes, I would assume they would as values in the hundreds really don’t make any sense.
However, is there a possibility of confusion between -8.75 (which is how I initially read it) and -0.875 (which seems to make more sense, although I’ve never personally had a prescription go down to the thousandths place.)
I haven’t seen it either - I work in ophthalmology though refractions aren’t really my area. To the OP - is your right eye dramatically worse than your left?
Checking the available refraction lenses here, they’re all in increments of 0.25, barring an odd -0.37 lens.
Oh, and the cylinder and axis relate to astigmatism. People who don’t have it may have a prescription with just the spherical numbers, or with much smaller numbers in the cylinder and axis for a very minor case. Yours looks pretty noticeable.
I wouldn’t worry about leaving out decimals; they’re pretty self-explanatory to people who work with glasses.
Those are “just” the definitions of your lenses. Which is all that really counts.
While strictly speaking there should be a period before the last two digits of the diopters many people leave them out and in China they are never used so that +1.50 would be written +150 and said “one hundred fifty”
So your prescription would be interpreted as follows
First the label is missing but this is probably for far distance vision.
Right eye: Spherical: -8.75 diopters, Cylindrical +3.00 diopters with the axis of the cylinder at 098º
Left eye: Spherical -1.75 diopters, Cylindrical +2.00 diopters with the axis of the cylinder at 074º
Missing is the interpupillary distance (distance between the eyes).
The next row is missing the label and it is probably for near distance - reading and it just means add one diopter to the above prescriptions which results in
Right eye: Spherical: -7.75 diopters, Cylindrical +3.00 diopters with the axis of the cylinder at 098º
Left eye: Spherical -0.75 diopters, Cylindrical +2.00 diopters with the axis of the cylinder at 074º
Missing is the interpupillary distance which would typically be 2-3 mm less than for distant vision.
Barring forgetfulness by the ophthalmologist, I was inclined to believe that the difference between the two eyes couldn’t be that dramatic, and went for what seemed like the more obvious of the two options. I haven’t seen any prescriptions in the thousandths either, I must confess; an accuracy of 0.25 dioptres seems to be standard.