Is 20/20 Vision Good?

Everyone reading this has heard the term 20/20. What does it mean? Is 20/20 vision ideal? Does everyone want 20/20?

Specifically, 20/20 means you can read a particular line on the Snellen eye chart (the one with the E on the top row) from 20 feet away. This is a way to standardize visual results but doesn’t measure other aspects of eye health or your ability to see well, including peripheral vision, depth perception, color blindness, eye coordination, or for diseases such as glaucoma.

With age, the ability to have perfect visual ability often declines. Generally, a 50-year-old cannot see as sharply as an 18-year-old. Our goal at The Eye Care Institute is for the patient to be “20/happy.” That is to say, the best vision for the patient not the best vision based on a standardized test. 

To the Doctors of The Eye Care Institute, saying you can see 20/20 is like saying you drive 45 miles per hour; too fast for a school zone, too slow for an airline flight, but ideal for a commercial road. This is similar to having 20/20 vision; over 81% of professional baseball players have visual acuity of 20/15 or better and would be unhappy with “mere” 20/20 vision. However, a person with progressive macular degeneration would be pleased with 20/20 vision. 

So, the next time you hear someone say they are 20/20, you can smile and know that good vision means different things to different people, and not everyone should expect, or want, 20/20 vision.   

To learn more about the Snellen eye chart, please see this article on All About Vision.