Aimsmum - An optician wanted to do that to my DS1 but, what with the threat of that and a complete lack of cooperation on appointment times we went somewhere else where they didn't feel the need to use the drops at all. DS would have freaked if anybody had tried to put the drops in and I couldn't see why they needed to do it tbh. They didn't seem able to give me a coherent answer to the question of why the drops were necessary so I wasn't putting DS (or me)through it for nothing.
Interesting the opticians who wanted to do it was a big chain and they used some swanky machine to look into the back of his eye and DS had to sit very still while the girl tried repeatedly to take pictures of his eye, very time consuming and ultimately a waste of time because they still couldn't get it right. The second opticians used one of those old fashioned lights that you shine in the back of the eye, DS didn't have to rest his chin on some machine for ages and she had no trouble at all seeing what she needed to see.
I do wonder about the necessity for these drops. The only other person I know who had them was my father and that was because he has macular degeneration and needed laser treatment so I thought the drops were a little bit OTT for DS tbh.