Eye Define: definitions to common eye terms that confound the public and sometimes the professionals

What is meant by your Best Vision or in the professional vernacular BVA (Best Visual Acuity, often referred to as BCVA or Best Corrected Visual Acuity)?

Your best vision is the smallest line of letters you can achieve on the eye chart with or without glasses.  Often the bottom of the chart is only normal vision: 20/20.  This is not your best vision because if you could do better you wouldn’t know?  It’s akin to reaching the finish-line faster than expected and just rounding up to the expected time for your age: don’t you want to know your score?

Most professionals don’t actually test for BVA, although they say they record it as such.  At 4Sight iCare we take our mission for every patient seriously: “Experience your best vision”.  The iconic image of the testing device called the phoropter made famous by Justin Timberlake is a tool used at most offices to determine your glasses prescription.  At 4Sight iCare it is used to demonstrate your best vision so you can experience how much better your sight can be if you use the best correction.  Over-correction can indeed cause eye strain and headaches, so we never over-prescribe, but under-prescribing does not provide your best vision if a different script could provide better visual acuity.  The only way to test for better visual acuity is to show smaller letters (20/15 and 20/10), randomize those letters, and ask that you read more letters with the change than without if you can.  It’s a simple concept that takes minutes to complete, but those minutes are not cherished at offices that do not have the same level of commitment to demonstrate your best possible vision.  Your best visual acuity is the foundation for improved performance through sports vision techniques used at practices like 4Sight iCare.