How To Read Vision Prescription

The following tips can help people read their eye prescriptions.

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. When you look at your prescription for eyeglasses you will see numbers listed under the headings of os and od. For multi focal glasses as well as reading and computer glasses your rx will include an add or nv value. If you re near sighted or far sighted check the sph column to find out how strong your lenses need to be. After an exam your doctor will prescribe eyeglasses or contact lenses or both.

They are latin abbreviations. The first thing you might notice when looking at your prescription is two abbreviations os and od. Dv is the portion of your prescription which corrects your ability to see things far away. This number always has a sign. Right and left eye.

Identify a sign. Or shows if you are long sighted longsightedness. The first step to understanding your eyeglass prescription is knowing what od and os mean. 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. To read an eyeglass prescription look for the labels o d and o s which stand for right eye and left eye respectively.

This is the lens power needed to fix your vision. This is short for oculus dexter and is your right eye. Sphere sph the sphere column is often abbreviated as sph. In a typical prescription like the one above you ll find these abbreviations on the left side. Positive numbers such as 1 00 explain how strong a lens needs to be to correct for farsightedness.

This is short for oculus sinister and is your left eye. These are latin abbreviations with os standing for oculus sinister or left eye and od standing for oculus dextrus or right eye. If your prescription doesn t have a second or third number you most likely don t have astigmatism. Os oculus sinister means the left eye and od oculus. The type of rx glasses may be noted on a prescription such as dv distance vision nearsightedness and nv near vision reading.