To find your dominant eye you must understand what it is. Your dominant eye is the eye that is primarily relied on for precise positional information. People will notice that eye dominance is especially important in many job occupations, an example would be a police officer that shoots firearms, sports, which require you to rely on your dominant eye such as archery and hunting. Your eye dominance is not necessarily the eye which sees better. Eye dominance is about which eye looks directly at an object. It is your non-dominant eye that looks at an object from a slight angle. Simply put, Eye dominance, also called eyedness, is when you have the tendency to prefer visual input from one eye to the other.
Why is eye dominance important when considering refractive surgery? Ocular dominance is an important consideration with a refractive surgery procedure because we need it to predict patient satisfaction with monovision or in cataract surgery. With a monovision procedure, you would have one eye to correct your distance vision and your other eye to correct your near vision. The eye corrected for distance vision is usually your dominant eye. In monovision, the eye that is fully corrected for distance vision will be slightly blurred up close and the eye that sees well up close will be slightly blurred when looking at distant objects. The key with monovision is to pay attention to what you see with both eyes open. The result is typically acceptably clear and comfortable vision at all distances for the patient.
To figure out your dominant eye, try this simple test:
- Find something to use as a target on a wall about 10 feet away from you. You can use anything as an object to focus on. With both eyes open, you make a triangle with one hand on top of the other.
- Close your left eye then your right eye while watching your target. Your target will be visible through one eye and not clearly visible through the other eye.
The eye that sees the target fully is your dominant eye.
