Eye Health Testing Helps Breeders See Clearly

Dr. Adam King, veterinary ophthalmologist, is back to talk about the importance and implications of various eye health screening.

“What we're doing is we're just looking for any abnormalities for any of the structures around the eyes,” King said. “So with the globe itself, with eyelids, with a third eyelid and then kind of going inside of the eye, the cornea, the iris or the colored portion inside of the eye the lens, the vitreous, which is the jelly like stuff in the back part of the eye. And then back into the fundus with the retina and the optic nerve.

“And so what we're doing is just kind of scanning for any abnormality that we have there… some of those abnormalities may be inherited and some of those abnormalities may be congenital but not inherited, so something that they're born with but not something that we consider to be inherited. And in some of those abnormalities could just be acquired so something from like an infection or a trauma or something like that.

“When it comes to the inherited changes that we see, some of those can be either something that we're really concerned about, something that the animal will fail the exam for. Some of those things are something that we do consider inherited but we don't really care that much about, it's not something that's going to affect the vision or the comfort of the animal. We give those a breeder option. So they do pass their exams “normal” exam. That's just saying ‘hey there is probably nothing to worry about but just so you know this is there.’

“Some of the things we mark down, we consider kind of probably inherited but it doesn't even come up with a breeder option so it just still passes … they’re probably inherited just 'cause we do see them more frequently in some breeds than others but they don't progress and those are something that we don't really see as too concerning.”

To find out about the eye health of your breed, visit the OFA’s amazing collection of data at:

https://www.ofa.org/diseases/eye-certification/blue-book