Myopia: Causes and Preventions

By Thomas P. Finley, OD

Dr. Finley's Family Eyecare

. http://visionsource-drfinley.net/

More Vision & Eye Care Articles

Myopia: Causes and Preventions

Myopia, or nearsightedness, occurs when your eyes grow too long, or the cornea, the clear protective front layer of your eye, is too curved. Light coming into your eye does not focus on the retina or back of your eye correctly. This causes far away objects to appear blurred.

People with myopia can usually see up close without any correction.  Common treatments for myopia are eyeglasses and contact lenses, or laser vision correction later in life.  Myopia typically begins in childhood and continues to become worse year after year until late teens or early twenties when it tends to stabilize.

Myopia is increasing at an alarming and epidemic rate.  Globally, it has increased 66% in the past 30 years, and it’s estimated half the world’s population or almost 5 billion people will be myopic by 2050.  Also, 10% of the population or around 1 billion people will have high myopia and be at risk of vision impairment and blindness. As myopia increases, sight-threatening diseases like myopic macular degeneration, retinal detachment, cataracts, and glaucoma also increase significantly.

Several risk factors have been identified:

• Having one or both parents with myopia

• Having older siblings with myopia

• Having a specific refractive error (determined during an eye exam) by age nine or less

• Spending more than 2.5 hours per day doing near work or using a digital device

• Spending less than 1.5 hours per day outdoors

• Ethnicity. East Asian cultures currently have a higher incidence of myopia

• Having a specific eye posture or focusing issue could indicate a higher risk of future myopia development.

Controlling myopia

With more people becoming nearsighted, there is a lot of interest in finding ways to control the progression of myopia in childhood. New myopia control therapies are becoming more mainstream and can help slow down or stabilize myopic progression. These include:

• OrthoKeratology: reverse geometry rigid gas permeable lenses one wears while sleeping

• Specially designed multifocal soft contact lenses

• Specially formulated low-dose prescription eye drops

• Special bifocal or progressive addition eyeglass lenses.

There is no one-treatment option available that works best for every individual.  It is important to discuss the specific options your eye doctor thinks will work best for your child.  Also, because there are so many variables at play, there can be no guarantees the selected treatment option will be effective and slow down the myopic progression. However, studies indicate some of the above methods reduce myopic progression over 50%.  That’s significant

Unfortunately, single vision eyeglasses and contact lenses have no positive effect in controlling the progression of myopin.  Similarly, recent studies have demonstrated under-correcting myopia has a negative effect and makes myopia worse.

Fortunately, if your child is nearsighted, there’s finally something that can be done to help slow down myopic progression instead of just purchasing stronger eyeglasses and/or contact lenses every year.