The results of a new clinical trial can provide more hope for children with myopia, often known as nearsightedness. The study found that children as young as 7 who regularly wore strong bifocal contact lenses had less increase in their myopia than children who wore less powerful than single-vision lenses over a three-year period. That’s what these kids suggest perhaps retain more of their view of adulthood.
Myopia is one of the most common visual conditions affecting people under the age of 40. Although the causes of myopia are complex, both genetics and environment are thought to play an important role. Especially have studies suggested that too much schooling and reduced outdoor play for preschoolers may contribute to myopia, probably because children spend too much time directed closely about objects in the vicinity.
Myopia tends to appear at around age 7 and persists less until the teenage years, on average. Ddoctors have studied ways to slow its progression as much as possible during that period, inclusive specialist eye drops and bifocal glasses and lenses. But this latest trial, known as the Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids, as BLINK, study, is the first to empirically compare it to high-driven, soft bifocal contact lenses are better for children with myopia than other types of contacts.
When measuring the distance or nearness of people, ophthalmologists rely on a metric called diopter. Compared to normal vision, people with myopia have a negative diopter. Although both single vision and multifocal glasses can correct a person’s vision so that they can see things far away accurately, multifocals also add more diopters, which can improve the face in people whose vision is restricted in more ways than one (bifocals are most common). common type of multifocals). On the downside, multifocals tend to be harder to physically fit than glasses with one face, and she limit more the field of view of a person.
In the trial, nearly 300 children, ages 7 to 11, were randomized to receive one of three types of contact. The children both received high-driven bifocals (an addition of 2.5 diopters), medium-driven bifocals (1.5 diopters), as single-vision lenses. Then they were observed for the next three years.
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The main findings of the study, published in JAMA, children with the strongest bifocal lenses experienced the least decline in their myopia (averaging -0.60 diopters), while children withvisual lenses experienced the greatest decline (in average -1.05 diopters). And although it is known that bifocals are difficult for adults to tolerate at first, with many adults experiencing symptoms such as headache, migraine aura, and problems with balance, the children who had the strongest correction lenses reported no added negative effects, probably because their eyes are better able to compensate.
“The long-term implication is that children wearing multifocal contact lenses are less likely to see than adults, which will ultimately make them less likely to experience threatening complications such as retinal detachment, glaucoma, and myopic maculopathy (poor vision itself). with glasses) as contact lenses due to large quantities of nearsightedness),‘Said lead author Jeffrey Walline, a professor of optometry at Ohio State University, in an e-mail.
Walline and his team plan to keep following the children in this study come for years, allowing them to continue wearing bifocal lenses for two years before switching to single-vision lenses. The hope is that these improvements will last once they stop wearing bifocals. But according to Walline, the results of this trial and others show that doctors should try to do everything possible to slow the progression of myopia. and that parents and children should be told in advance about the current treatments. At present, it is thought that one third of Americans have some amount of myopia. In China, the majority of children are nearsighted.
“This is a change from simply prescribing their vision correction that improves vision but does not affect the progress of nearsightness,” Walline said.
At the same time, although the children in this study were able to wear bifocals without problems, it is likely that this strategy will not work for everyone. In that case, Walline has been added, there are other options, such as orthokeratology (the use of special contracts worn at night that temporarily reform the cornea) or lowconcentration of atropine eye drops, which remove the pupils and may stop the eyes from getting too long.
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