You should examine patients at the most appropriate intervals, depending on their clinical needs. This applies to both private and NHS patients.²⁶

Contact lens patients may need more frequent appointments for aftercare but are not entitled to more frequent NHS sight tests simply because they wear contact lenses.

In the absence of clinical indications, you should not recall patients more frequently than the following intervals:
 

Patient age and/or condition	Recommended minimum re-examination interval
The intervals given below should not be taken as applying automatically to all patients in a category.
Up to 16 years old, no binocular vision anomaly or refractive error	One year
under seven years old, with binocular vision anomaly or corrected refractive error	Six months
Seven-15 years old, with binocular vision anomaly or rapidly progressing myopia	Six months
16 years old and over	Two years
with diabetes who are part of diabetic retinopathy monitoring scheme	Two years
with diabetes who are not part of diabetic retinopathy monitoring scheme	One year

To ensure refractive error is optimally corrected, it may be appropriate to examine children who are myopic, or at risk for myopia, annually until the age of 12-13 years, and every two years thereafter’.²⁷

In the absence of clinical indications, you should not examine patients who are being monitored by the hospital eye service more frequently than every two years.