How To Read Vision Prescription

If you want to learn how to read prescriptions for glasses you must start with decoding the acronyms and abbreviations commonly found in them.

How to read vision prescription. Os oculus sinister means the left eye and od oculus. Dv is the portion of your prescription which corrects your ability to see things far away. If your prescription doesn t have a second or third number you most likely don t have astigmatism. Nv your prescription might also contain the abbreviations dv distance vision or nv near vision. The following tips can help people read their eye prescriptions.

This is short for oculus dexter and is your right eye. After an exam your doctor will prescribe eyeglasses or contact lenses or both. The first step to understanding your eyeglass prescription is knowing what od and os mean. Identify a sign. The first thing you might notice when looking at your prescription is two abbreviations os and od.

The type of rx glasses may be noted on a prescription such as dv distance vision nearsightedness and nv near vision reading. Or shows if you are long sighted longsightedness. To read an eyeglass prescription look for the labels o d and o s which stand for right eye and left eye respectively. They are latin abbreviations. Positive numbers such as 1 00 explain how strong a lens needs to be to correct for farsightedness.

This is what they all mean. Sphere sph the sphere column is often abbreviated as sph. Apart from your name and date of birth you will notice that there are quite a few letters numbers and symbols on your prescription. For multi focal glasses as well as reading and computer glasses your rx will include an add or nv value. They are abbreviations for oculus dexter and oculus sinister which are latin terms for right eye and left eye your eyeglass prescription also may have a column labeled ou.

This is short for oculus sinister and is your left eye. This number always has a sign. There are different ways in which ophthalmologists may write prescriptions. If you re near sighted or far sighted check the sph column to find out how strong your lenses need to be. Additionally read the cyl column to find the strength of lens you need to correct astigmatism.