Around a third of people in the UK are myopic (short-sighted) where distance vision appears blurred. The condition usually starts in childhood and tends to get worse until the eye has stopped growing but can also develop in adults. People are more likely to become myopic if their parents are also myopic.
Symptoms of Myopia
If your child is myopic they will have problems seeing things in the distance clearly without glasses or contact lenses but don’t normally have trouble seeing things close to them.
How myopia is treated
Myopia is usually easy to treat with glasses or contact lenses. There are also some new treatments that may slow down myopia during childhood and this is called MYOPIA MANAGEMENT.
Myopia Management
If a person has a high level of myopia they will be at slightly greater risk of having reduced sight later in life due to conditions such as retinal detachment, glaucoma and retinal degeneration. It is because of this that much research has gone into methods that can slow myopia progression in children. Results are encouraging.
Myopia management spectacle lenses.
- These are specially designed spectacle lenses that have been shown to slow myopia in children on average by 60%. The spectacles have to be worn full time for the lenses to work best. A myopic eye is an eye that grows more than it should and these lenses aim to slow this growth.
Myopia management contact lenses.
- Similarly, these contact lenses have been designed to slow the growth of the myopic eye and therefore slow the progression of the myopia. Again, they have to be worn full-time (10 hours a day) but not at night.
There is also evidence that spending as much time outdoors as possible can slow progression of myopia, particularly between the ages of 5 and 12. This is because the eyes are more relaxed when outside as they focus on distant objects. Natural sunlight is also thought to have a role in encouraging the eyes to develop in the correct way. Time spent on devices when inside where the focusing distance is much closer should be limited.
