Specialized Care for Unique Vision Needs.
When your vision requires more specialized attention, Blue River Vision offers personalized treatment options designed around your individual needs.
Our specialty services focus on helping patients manage specific vision concerns and improve how they see, feel, and function in everyday life.
Vision therapy uses personalized activities and exercises to help improve visual skills and coordination. It may be recommended for patients experiencing challenges with how their eyes work together.
A concussion can sometimes affect vision and visual processing. Our team provides specialized care to evaluate vision-related concerns and support your path toward improved visual function.
Dry, uncomfortable eyes can affect your daily life. We evaluate your symptoms and help identify personalized treatment options designed to improve comfort and support healthier eyes.
Sports vision training works on improving the visual abilities of an athlete that are most necessary for excellence in their sport. Some of these abilities include eye-hand coordination, dynamic visual acuity, tracking, focusing, visual reaction time, and peripheral vision. All activities are done on a sport-specific basis with a custom-tailored program for each sport and athlete. Therefore, a program for a tennis player will emphasize eye-hand coordination and dynamic visual acuity whereas a program for a golfer will concentrate on visual alignment and depth perception to see the breaks in the greens.
Many athletes are amazed at how we can predict their performance based on our findings from a visual screening. If you are having trouble getting to the next level in your particular sport even after stepping up your practice, you might have a visual problem limiting your success.
Research shows that over 80% of what we learn comes from the visual system. That percentage goes up with sports because the eyes direct the dynamic movement of the body. Statistics taken from sports vision screenings at the Olympic and Junior Olympic level show that those athletes that brought home medals where those that had the best visual systems.
Other statistics include:
Having visual difficulties in any of the areas discussed above will translate into difficulties on the field. However, all of these areas can be improved upon through the course of a sports vision therapy/enhancement program. Coaches often are amazed at how we can predict an athlete’s performance just by looking at their screening results. Athletes that step up their practice and training regimen but don’t achieve performance gains on the field, usually have a visual difficulty that is hindering their performance.
Strobe glasses are utilized by professional sports teams to improve the speed and accuracy of visual processing. We also utilize these in our sports vision training.
The Synaptec Sensory Station is a state-of-the-art sensory evaluation and training device designed to assess the visual and sensory performance of the modern athlete. Each athlete is tested on 10 sports-related visual and sensory skills using a custom app that communicated directly with high definition and touch screen monitors integrated directly in the system. Individual performance can be compared instantly to our athlete database system and compared by position, sport and competition level to produce a custom athlete profile. Every athlete report identifies areas of improvement and recommends a course of action.
Myopia or nearsightedness is the inability to see things clearly at a distance. These people require glasses to see far away. In the 1970s, only 25% of Americans were myopic. Today that number is 42%. That is a 66% increase. The National Eye Institute believes that 39 million Americans will be nearsighted (myopic) by the year 2020. It isn’t just in the US that we are seeing this shift. In Canada, 72.4% of people age 20-24 are nearsighted. In Taiwan 84% of individuals aged 16-18 are nearsighted. And in South Korea, just looking at 19-yearold males, 96.5% are myopic.
What is causing this myopic epidemic? The studies are unclear, but the thought is that it may be linked to the increasing use of computers and near work. Children are spending less time outside and more time fixated on a screen.
What is the problem with myopia: High levels of myopia doubles the risk of serious ocular health problems like retinal detachments, cataracts, and glaucoma. The risk of retinopathy for high myopes increase with age.
What can we do about myopia? Is there any way to stop the development of myopia? Over the last few years, research has proven three different ways to manage the progression of myopia. Myopia progression can be managed by using executive bifocals, multifocal soft lenses, low dose atropine and hard lenses that shape the cornea when you are sleeping. These lenses are called Ortho K.
Myopia is the most common refractive eye condition in the world today and the number of patients being diagnosed is continuing to rise year on year. This is especially the case in children – something which is believed to be a result of increased screen time and not enough time spent in natural daylight. Characterized by the ability to see nearby objects clearly, but those that are further away appear blurred, myopia can make some aspects of day to day life tricky at best. While glasses and contact lenses can be used to correct refractive eye conditions including myopia, these are not practical solutions for every patient. They also do not stop the myopic progression. Fortunately, there is a type of treatment that can. It is known as orthokeratology or Ortho-K for short.
Refractive eye errors such as myopia occur because the light that enters the eyeball is not refracted directly onto the retina. In the case of myopia, the light falls short of the retina, causing the images of objects far away to appear blurred. The reason that this happens is either that the eyeball is too long, or because the cornea, which is the clear, dome-shaped surface covering the eye, is too steep.
The principle behind Ortho-K is fairly simple. The process involves temporarily reshaping the cornea and correcting the refractive error so that the patient can see clearly without the need for glasses or contact lenses. This reshaping is carried out using speciallydesigned contact lenses, which are worn overnight and place gentle pressure onto the cornea in order to change their shape. Unlike regular contacts, these gas-permeable varieties are safe to be worn overnight while you sleep, and their customized nature means that they are exceedingly comfortable and will not disrupt your rest.
Ortho-K treatment is progressive and as such, you should expect to continue with nightly treatment to obtain the maximum improvement in your vision that lasts for an entire day at a time. Orthokeratology is completely reversible, so if you decide to discontinue treatment at any time, there is no lasting effect on your eyes.
Extensive studies have found that orthokeratology solutions are without doubt a safe and effective myopia management solution. Not only can enable children to see clearly without prescription glasses or contacts during the day, but they can slow or even halt the progression of myopia. This is important, as myopia control may help to reduce the risk of vision-threatening complications associated with moderate to severe myopia in later life, including cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and retinal detachment.
Paragon CRT is one brand of orthokeratology solution and the variety that we most often recommend to patients who visit our practice in Silverthorne, CO. Paragon CRT has been prescribed to over 1.5 million patients in over 50 countries across the globe.
Some of the benefits of choosing Paragon CRT for myopia management include the
following:
If you would like more information on orthokeratology or to schedule a consultation to see if you are a suitable candidate for Paragon CRT, please contact Blue River Vision in Silverthorne, CO today by calling (970) 451-0015.
Vision therapy is a doctor-supervised, non-surgical and customized program of visual activities designed to correct certain vision problems and/or improve visual skills. Unlike eyeglasses which simply compensate for vision problems or eye surgery that alters the anatomy of the eye or surrounding muscles, vision therapy aims to “teach” the visual system to correct itself.
Unlike other forms of exercise, the goal of Vision Therapy is not to “strengthen” eye muscles. Your eye muscles are already incredibly strong. Vision Therapy should not be confused with any self-directed program of eye exercises which is or has been marketed to the public. Vision Therapy does not eliminate the need for distance glasses and is not suitable for every patient with any of the above diagnoses or symptoms.
Vision Therapy is not a “cure” dyslexia or ADHD. It can alleviate symptoms that may be similar to symptoms of dyslexia or ADHD. If a child has an occasional double vision while reading, her eyes jump around the page, or he has trouble keeping his eyes “in-focus” up close, that child will exhibit symptoms such as slow reading, low attention while reading, poor reading comprehension, or even letter reversals. When the act of reading is so difficult visually, most children will get frustrated easily and avoid reading or homework at all costs. When we help them improve their visual skills – tracking, coordinating the eyes, shifting focus quickly, etc. – then we often see improvement in behavioral symptoms.
Vision therapy is safe, drug-free, and effective for both children and Adults! While visual acuity (the “20/20” part of vision) requires glasses to improve, Visual Skills such as tracking together along a line of text must be learned during Development, these skills can also be improved later in life at any age.
It Is Estimated That 1 In 10 Children Have A Vision Problem Severe Enough To Affect Their Learning In School, but school vision screenings can miss up to half of these problems. A Comprehensive Vision Exam with a developmental optometrist checks all aspects of eye health, vision, and visual skills, and can ensure you or your child is not struggling unnecessarily with an undiagnosed vision problem.
Common diagnoses that are treated with Vision Therapy:
Designed for amblyopia, strabismus, and vergence disorders, Vivid Vision is a state of the art virtual reality training to improve these vision disorders. We utilize this equipment and program in our Vision Therapy sessions. For more information, check out this video from an optometrist in Florida utilizing this system.
Reading is the gateway to knowledge, insight, and joy. But for many students, that gateway is never opened. They may show progress reading aloud, but when reading on their own they often struggle, fall behind, and lose interest in reading entirely.
We utilize a Visagraph system to measure the child’s eye movements and check their tracking ability. We are looking to see if their eyes track across the page efficiently and effectively for their grade level and reading ability. Reading Plus is one of the programs that we utilize alongside our other vision therapy programs to help improve the tracking ability and the reading ability in children.
Our team is here to help you understand your options and find the right care for your needs.
