What is eyeglass prescription

How to get your prescription

In 1978, the Federal Trade Commission passed a regulation rule known as Ophthalmic Practice Rule, or Eyeglass Rule. The rule requires eye doctors (optometrists or ophthalmologists) to give patients their eyeglass prescriptions at no extra cost. Based on the rule, you can ask for a copy of your prescription from your eye doctor after an eye exam.

The tricky part of the rule is that it doesn’t specify if the eyeglasses prescription includes Pupillary Distance (PD) or not. In most of the cases, upon request of measuring your PD, your eye doctor will include the PD in the prescription. Recently some industry giants are calling on the Eye Care Professionals (ECPs) to embrace the online technology and support the online optical stores to serve our patients in a better and more affordable way. PD is a critical number for us to produce the lenses and fit the lenses into the frame to match the optical centers of your eyes.

Though some online stores recommend ways of measuring your PD by yourself in front of mirror or by your family member using a regular ruler, we strongly suggest you get this number from your optician or eye doctor. It may take some time or charge some fee, but it is worth for your eye health.

An eyeglass prescription is a written order by an optometrist, ophthalmologist, orthoptist for eyeglasses. It specifies the refractive power to which the eyeglasses are to be made in order correct blurred vision due to refractive errors, including myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and presbyopia. Eyeglass prescription issued by different doctors may differ in format, but they somewhat look like the following 4 samples. You may choose the sample which is close to yours in hand and read the notes after each sample.

Example One

Example Two

Example Three

Example Four

Explaination:

1. This prescription is issued in vertical format, while most the prescriptions are of horizontal ones.

2. This prescription use the plain English with no abbreviations from Latin.

3. SPH= Sphere=Spherical, is the strength of your prescription, bears sign “+” or “-”, “+”refers to farsightedness and presbyopia, “-”refers to nearsightedness. If "PL" or "Plano" is stated at the place of SPH on your prescription, please enter 0.00 for this option.

4. CYL= Cylinder= Cylindrical, i is the diopters degree of the astigmatism. This number also has “+” or “-” signs. If "DS" or"SPH" or "spherical" or “PL” is stated at the place of CYL, it means you have no astigmatism and 0.00 is the option required to choose.

5. Axis, is a number between 0 and 180 degrees, and means the orientation of your astigmatism. There is no sign before this number.

6. Add= Near Addition, means the power strength to be added to the Sphere number for making single vision reading glasses or bifocal and progressive eyeglasses. In this prescription, the “Add” numbers are put under the “Add” spaces. Some of the doctors may write one number with sign such as “+2.00” in the middle of the space under “Add.”, which means your both eyes have the same Add numbers.

7. PD= Pupillary Distance, in this sample, the PD is written as “62/59”, in which “62” is the “ Far PD”, while “59” is the “Near PD”

8. In writing the decimals in this prescription, all the decimals are written with the decimal points being clearly there. You can just enter all the numbers as shown on the prescription sheet in our webpage.

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No. Contact lens prescription can be used for buying contacts from your doctor’s office, the local optical stores and online contact lenses retailers. You need a special eyeglass prescription to order eyeglasses from us.

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No. We strongly suggest you use your eyeglass prescription in the most recent 2 years to order with us. Actually Eye Care Professionals (ECPs) suggest an eye exam each six months or one year to detect any possible eye diseases in the earlier stage.

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Your PD stands for Pupillary Distance, which is the distance between your pupils in millimeters, Your PD is very important for accurately fitting your lenses to achieve vision acuity.

Pupillary Distance Diagram

Your PD may be written in three ways:

1. PD (OU), written as "62", means the Binocular PD which is for both eyes.

2. PD (OD), means the Monocular PD for the right eye, PD (OS), means the Monocular PD for the left eye, A Monocular OD is written as two numbers, for example "32/30", "32" represents the PD for the right eye, and "30" for the left eye.

3. Sometimes PD is written as "62/59" or they are labeled "Far" and "Near". Your PD is usually measured for distance vision, which is 'Far PD", or "62" in this example. For reading glasses, doctors measure your "Near PD" or "59" in the example.

4. Always enter your "Far PD" for distance vision eyeglasses and enter your 'Near PD" for your reading glasses only. For most people, the difference between Far PD and Near PD is about 2-3mm.

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Step 1: Stand with a friend facing you and place a millimeter ruler on the bridge of your nose. Keep the rule "0" measurement is exactly in line with the center of your left pupil. Hold the ruler straight.

Step 2: Let your friend read the measurement between the left pupil and the right pupil while you look straight ahead.

Step 3: For measuring a PD with high accuracy, please do it 3 times and take an average number of them as the final PD measurement.

For those requiring bifocal or progressive lenses, we strongly recommend you get this information from your optician to ensure the accuracy of your glasses.

You may also measure your PD in front of a mirror,here we show how to do it

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