Myopia and Preventative Treatment: A Guide

Doctors usually diagnose myopia before age 20. The condition affects distance vision, allowing you to see nearby objects clearly but making distant ones blurry. Experts estimate that by 2050, short-sightedness could affect 5 billion people, half the global population.

Myopia treatments include glasses, contact lenses, or surgery.

About Myopia

Myopia is a progressive eye disorder which affects vision, quality of life, and increases eye health risks across a person’s lifetime. Myopia typically starts before the age of 10 and then deteriorates every few to several months until it stabilises in the late teens or early 20s.

The condition develops when the eyes grow too quickly and become longer than normal. In children, the eyes should grow steadily until the teenage years and then stabilise. In myopia, the eyes grow too quickly leading to rapid and continual deterioration of vision and continued eye growth through the teenage years and even into early adulthood.

What Causes Myopia

Myopia typically occurs when our eyeball grows too long from front to back, causing light to focus in front of the retina, rather than directly on it. This results in distant objects appearing blurred.

Myopia can also arise if the cornea is too distinctly curved. Research suggests that the eye can elongate further to compensate for blurred vision, particularly in growing children, which can worsen short-sightedness over time.

Genetic factors significantly influence the development of myopia, increasing the likelihood when one or both parents are affected, though not guaranteeing it. Environmental factors, including prolonged close-up activities, excessive screen time, and limited time outdoors, also raise the risk of developing myopia.

 

Types of Myopia

There are three types of myopia: high myopia, moderate myopia, and low myopia. Mild short-sightedness, generally less than 3 dioptres of myopia, is called low myopia. Moderate short-sightedness or myopia is 3 to 6 dioptres of myopia. Severe short-sightedness, more than 6 dioptres of myopia, is called high myopia.

Dioptre: A dioptre is a unit of measurement that represents the optical strength of a lens.

 

Signs of Myopia

Short-sightedness usually starts in children from the ages of 6 to 13. It can also develop in adults.

Signs you or your child may be short-sighted include:

• Difficulty reading words from a distance, such as reading the whiteboard at school
• Sitting close to the TV or computer or holding a mobile phone or tablet close to the face
• Getting headaches
• Rubbing the eyes a lot
• Squinting to see properly
• Tiredness when driving, playing sport, or looking more than a few feet away

Short-sightedness often runs in families so you may have relatives who are also short-sighted. It can get worse until the eye has stopped growing, at around 20 years of age.

Young children with myopia might not complain about their blurry vision, so eye exams and vision tests are important in young children. Some children are born short-sighted, and some don’t become short-sighted until their teen years.

What are the Complications of Myopia?

In most cases, myopia can be treated with glasses, contact lenses, or corrective surgery, like LASIK. However, some cases of myopia can lead to more serious eye conditions, including:

• Cataracts
• Glaucoma
• Myopic maculopathy
• Retinal detachment

People with short-sightedness have a higher risk of developing a detached retina. This is when the tissue lining the back of your eye lifts away or separates from the eye wall. It is a serious eye problem that can cause blindness.

It is important for people with high myopia to visit an optometrist regularly for exams to check the retina. The more severe your myopia, the greater your risk.

How is Myopia Diagnosed?

An optometrist can diagnose myopia during a routine eye exam.

Your optometrist will evaluate how your eyes focus light and measure the power of any corrective lenses you may need. They’ll test your visual acuity (sharpness of vision) by asking you to read letters on an eye chart. Then they’ll use a lighted retinoscope to measure how your retina reflects light.

How is Myopia Treated?

Glasses or contact lenses can correct myopia in children and adults. For adults, there are also several types of refractive surgeries that can correct myopia.

With myopia, your prescription for glasses or contact lenses is a negative number. The higher the number, the stronger your lenses will be. The prescription helps your eyes focus light onto your retina, clearing up your distance vision.

• Glasses: The most popular form of myopia treatment. Depending on the degree of vision correction needed, you’ll wear glasses daily or only when you need clear distance vision.
• Contact Lenses: Some people find that their distance vision is sharper and wider with contact lenses.
• Ortho-k or CRT: Some people with mild myopia may be candidates for temporary corneal refractive contact lenses that you wear to bed to reshape your cornea temporarily, long enough for your daily activities.
• LASIK: A laser is used to change the shape of your cornea to improve the way light rays are focused on the retina. The ophthalmologist will make a paper-thin flap in the cornea tissue that is folded back to gain access with the laser to reshape.
• LASEK: A surface laser treatment which is performed on the surface on the cornea. This makes it a more suitable option than LASIK for patients with thin corneas or certain medical conditions. Unlike LASIK, only the excimer laser is used to reshape the corneal tissue.
• Intraocular Lens Implant: This allows your eye doctor to surgically insert a new lens into your eye, replacing your natural one.

 

Prevention and Myopia Control

Short-sightedness is hard to prevent but there are some steps you can take to stop it getting worse. These include:

• Spending more time outdoors, especially important for children
• Taking regular breaks from screen time and close-up work
• Ensuring good lighting when reading or doing close-up tasks

Myopia Control for Children

Myopia control treatments are available to slow down the progression, or worsening, of childhood myopia. These include special types of glasses, soft contact lenses, ortho-k contact lenses, and atropine eye drops. These treatments have short-term benefits between eye exams and long-term benefits of protecting eye health.

At Opticare we offer two main forms of myopia control for children.

MiYOSMART Glasses

MiYOSMART is an innovative glasses lens for myopia management developed by HOYA and is proven to curb myopia progression in children on average by 60% (based on a two-year clinical trial).

These new kinds of lenses make myopia control safe and convenient – and no different from wearing ordinary glasses. They are a non-invasive solution, easy to adapt to, and are suitable for full time daily wear.

The lenses provide clear vision and constant myopic defocus simultaneously. They correct your child’s vision for both near and far, whilst also working to reduce the progression of their shortsightedness.

• Made of polycarbonate with high impact resistance
• Safe and durable, suitable for active wear
• Provides comprehensive UV protection for the eyes
• Water repellent so easy to keep clean
• Special anti-reflective durable coating

 

MiSight Contact Lenses

Designed for children, MiSight 1-day is a soft, daily disposable contact lens proven to slow myopia progression. By correcting shortsightedness, it allows children to enjoy clear, glasses-free vision. Its innovative optical design also helps reduce the speed at which myopia develops.

Over a three-year clinical study of MiSight 1-day contact lenses in children aged 8-15 years:
• 90% of children said they preferred wearing the contact lenses over wearing their glasses
• 90% of children could handle the contact lenses on their own
• 100% of parents said their children were happy with the experience of wearing contact lenses, including comfort, vision, ease of use, and freedom from glasses.