Who can help you?
The optician can examine you for astigmatism and your need for spectacles or contact lenses. You can handle some eye problems yourself with over-the-counter medicine from the pharmacy. In other cases, your general practitioner can treat you and prescribe medicine. If there is need for a more thorough examination, you should go to your eye doctor who everyone can see without a referral.
Depending on what problem you have, you will get an appointment fast or with some waiting time. In some areas in Denmark, there is a long waiting time. If you think that the waiting time is too long, you can contact your own general practitioner who can evaluate if you need an acute appointment with the eye doctor. In these cases, the general practitioner can contact an eye doctor or a hospital.
It is an advantage to contact an optician first if the main problem is slowly impaired vision. The general practitioner can examine and treat the most common eye illnesses. General practitioners examines eyesight at the normal child examinations until the child starts in school. Hereafter the school nurse examines the eyesight. If the eyesight is impaired, the child is referred to an eye doctor who will examine whether the child needs spectacles or if it could be an eye disease.
This section concerns the most common eye problems, eye diseases and a few rare, but serious eye diseases, where you need help fast in order to not lose your eyesight.
Each section describes occurrence, symptoms and treatment of different eye diseases. At the end of each section, we describe what you can do yourself, your optician, your general practitioner and your eye doctor.
The first section informs about the most common signs of eye diseases and which diseases to consider if you have the signs in question. If you are in doubt, you shall always ask your optician, general practitioner or eye doctor for advice.