20/20

Fitting and Adjusting Frames

May 2023 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

From Nine to Ninety!

Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my glasses. As a high-myope, without the assistance of corrective lenses, I cannot comfortably, or at least independently, navigate in the environment around me. As an optician, one of the most rewarding things for me is to fit someone with their first pair of glasses and I can tell based on the conversation and prescription in front of me, it's going to improve that person's quality of life.
November 2021 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

Combatting Poor Bridge Fits

When it comes to helping patients select frames that will be appropriate for their individual features and lens needs, it must not be underestimated how important proper bridge fit is to the overall comfort and performance of the glasses you will be designing with your patient. I’ve often heard that nearly 80% of the overall fit of the glasses happens at the bridge (and I don’t have the proper source to cite here, but in my personal observations, I’d say this is an accurate statement). If you have a poor bridge fit, it shifts the additional work of keeping the glasses in place to the temples and temple adjustment. This often creates a sore ear scenario, and an unhappy patient.
February 2021 Resources

Advice From Ms. Specs in the City

Dear Fabulous Readers,
This month’s column is about fine-tuning the frame selection process for face shapes. Ms. Specs was delighted to receive so many inquiries regarding this important topic. Thank you to all who wrote in!
September 2018 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

Adventures in Eavesdropping: The Adjustment Shuffle

Confession time: I can’t adjust my own glasses. That’s not to impugn my own abilities at fixing other people’s—I did just fine during many years of tinkering with temples and noodling nosepads. In all fairness, though, I never lived up to the Montgomery Scott-like abilities of my old colleague Dawn Gibbs at Texas State Optical in Magnolia, who could seemingly adjust a pair of frames that’d been run over by a semi and have them feeling even more comfortable than before the accident. When it comes to my own glasses, however, I’m rather like the master barber who can’t cut his own hair. They’re just too close, too personal, and I’m too finicky.
January 2018 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

Improve PAL Success with Improved PAL Fitting

In Part 1, I introduced angle Kappa, the angle between the pupillary axis and the visual axis, as a reason for patient dissatisfaction with PALs.  Part 2 addresses why angle Kappa is important.
November 2017 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

Eyes Are the Window to the Soul…We Frame the Connections!

Ever hear the joke about the girl who walks into a bar? She orders a martini, notices a rather dapper gentleman wearing a pair of incredible glasses, and decides to ask him where he purchased them.
I ordered them online.
Girl then proceeds to call her cousin: Can you measure my face? I’d like to order some glasses online.
Here’s the punchline: I’m the cousin. Funny,right? NOT!
October 2017 Fitting and Adjusting Frames

Don’t Get Scared

I was dispensing a pair of glasses to a patient I hadn’t seen for the initial fit.  As I leaned in to place the glasses on his face he said, “Now, don’t get scared.” In the split second between that statement and his next, I hesitated and wondered what was going to happen. It’s amazing what you can think of in a very short period of time! Would he bite? Have a seizure? Faint? It was a combination of relief and compassion when the patient told me he had a prosthetic nose. His nose had been removed due to cancer and replaced by a latex form. I had to look closely at his bridge to see the very fine line of the prosthesis.