Is it too late to start managing myopia?
Updated: Apr 20
When your child has been diagnosed with myopia, one of the first questions which come to mind is whether it is too late to do anything to treat the condition. Before we answer this we have to start by acknowledging that myopia is largely irreversible.
However, that doesn’t mean that we should sit back and simply accept that a child will wear glasses for the rest of their life. Myopia is a progressive condition so anything which can slow down the progression of the myopia can have a cumulative benefit in later life. And whilst the earlier that treatment can start the better, even in older children whose myopia may have progressed further a myopia management plan can be beneficial.
That’s the conclusion of a six year study looking at the outcomes of prescribing dual focus contact lenses as a means of managing myopia. [1] Dual focus lenses not only correct vision, they also manage the way the light falls on the retina, helping to mitigate some of the conditions which lead to myopia.
This study backed up previous studies showing that treatment of myopic children with dual focus lenses produced sustained slowing of myopia progression over a 6-year period. But it also demonstrated that ‘significant slowing’ was observed in children who were switched from a single vision lens to dual lenses after a three year period, meaning that even in older children some benefit can arise from myopia management plans.
If you're a parent whose child has been diagnosed with myopia, or if they are struggling with their distance vision, we hope you found MyopiaFocus helpful. Please join our community or sign our petition to get the government and NHS to recognise myopia as an ocular disease/serious ocular condition and fund myopia management for children.