Why do people STILL get their eye dialated for routine exams?

Seriously.  Lately I’ve seen more than one diabetes blogger who was getting their eyes dialated.  That is so 1990’s and before.

Here’s the deal — my eye doctor’s office is very much into prevention and they’ve had Optomax Retinal Exams for a long time.   This is their page on it:  http://www.c-l-c.com/clc_services_opto_map.htmlhttp://www.c-l-c.com/clc_services_opto_map.html  You stand in front of a machine, hold your eyes as wide open as you can, don’t blink and they simply take a picture.  It saves a picture in the doctor’s computer so they can compare prior images, and so it can be sent to a specialist if needed. 

My doctor gets to fuss at me for not wearing sunglasses — apparently that changes the retina some.  But the really great thing is that they can compare and see if the eye has changed and how fast.  They have done a diation and a double check, but only when they couldn’t decide what a change was — and it was in the early days of the mapping.