Posted: May 25 2022
Eye HealthMyopia is a common eye condition, where your vision is ‘short’ or ‘near’ sighted – objects are clear when up close, but blurry at a distance. This might mean your child struggles to see the whiteboard at school clearly, or if you are driving, the traffic or street signs are blurry.
During childhood and adolescence, in some people the eyeball doesn’t grow consistently, stretching longer as the body grows and develops. This can lead to your distance vision becoming blurry as the light is not focussed on the back of the eye.
Myopia is a common condition and many think that it can be fixed by just wearing glasses. While glasses correct the vision they do not change the shape of the eye, requiring the patient to continue to wear corrective lenses. Unfortunately myopia can develop into “high” myopia, where the condition progressively worsens and if left untreated it will require stronger, thicker prescription lenses, and can lead to future eye health problems in the future, such as glaucoma, retinal detachment and cataracts1.
Myopia is becoming more common in children around the world. It’s been estimated that half the world population will have myopia by 2050.2
Lifestyle and family genetics and history are the main factors that can put your child at greater risk of developing myopia. It is known that Myopia runs in the family.
Signs to look out for include:
Sometimes there aren’t any obvious symptoms, so regular eye tests, especially for children, are important to detect changes in the eye and vision.
Myopia can progress in a number of different ways. For some the changes are very slight, other more pronounced over a shorter period of time. Key reasons for progression include:
There are ways to slow or remove the progression of myopia, and to manage the condition into adulthood. Consider:
Remember prescription glasses and contacts will only address the blurry vision, and your prescription will need to be updated as myopia progressively worsens.
Myopia treatment lenses and glasses
Myopia control contact lenses
Ortho-K or overnight contact lenses
Pharmaceutical treatment
1Holden B; Fricke T; Wilson D; Jong M; Naidoo K; Sankaridurg P; Wong T; Naduvilath T; Resnikoff S. Global prevalence of myopia and high myopia and temporal trends from 2000 through 2050. American Academy of Ophthalmology 2016
2Brien A. Holden, Timothy R. Fricke, David A. Wilson, Monica Jong, Kovin S. Naidoo, Padmaja Sankaridurg, Tien Y. Wong, Thomas J. Naduvilath, Serge Resnikoff. Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050. Ophthalmology, 2016; DOI: HYPERLINK "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2016.01.006
3Lim LT, Gong Y, Ah-Kee EY, Xiao G, Zhang X. Impact of parental history of myopia on the development of myopia in mainland China school-aged children. Opthalmology and Eye Disease. 2014; 6:31-5 NOTE: from Child Myopia brochure p3
4Time spent in outdoor activities in relation to myopia prevention and control: a meta‐analysis and systematic review
Shuyu Xiong, 1 , 2 Padmaja Sankaridurg, 3 , 4 Thomas Naduvilath, 3 Jiajie Zang, 5 Haidong Zou, 1 , 2 Jianfeng Zhu, 1 Minzhi Lv, 1 Xiangui He,corresponding author 1 , 6 and Xun Xu 1 , 2
Posted: May 25 2022
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© Copyright Health Partners. 2022 All Rights Reserved.
Health Partners is committed to providing quality and affordable health care, and we value our members and our obligation to protect your privacy. As part of our responsibility in protecting your privacy, from time to time we review our policies to ensure we are meeting our obligations. We have recently made some updates to our Privacy Policy. Please click here to view the Health Partners Privacy Policy.
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