Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a progressive condition that affects your child’s vision, often impacting their ability to learn, socialize, and play.
With the help of an experienced optometrist, myopia control can manage this refractive error and help preserve your child’s vision.
What Is Myopia?
Myopia—commonly referred to as nearsightedness—is caused by a change in the shape of the eyeball or a change in the cornea or lens. This changes how light refracts inside the eye. Rather than focusing directly on the retina, light focuses in front of it. As a result, distant objects become blurrier.
Myopia usually begins showing signs around early school years and continues progressing into early adulthood. Nearsightedness affects your ability to see at a distance, but it can also cause:
- Headaches
- Eye strain
- Squinting
This can impact your child’s learning and ability to focus, especially when trying to focus on distant writing or objects. But it isn’t just about clarity and eyesight. The changes in the structure of your child’s eye can put them at a higher risk of other problems later in life, such as increased risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma, maculopathy, and early cataract formation.
While wearing contact lenses and eyeglasses can temporarily correct your child’s vision but allowing them to see clearly, regular lenses typically don’t stop the condition from progressing.
How Does Myopia Control Work?
Managing myopia doesn’t just mean correcting vision. Myopia management slows the progression and helps preserve more of your child’s vision while lowering their risk of future problems.
To do so, an optometrist recommends myopia control. This is a combination of techniques designed to reduce how much your child’s eyeball elongates, thereby slowing the prescription progression, and also the anatomical changes that can increase the risk of eye health problems.
Through a combination of special lenses, lifestyle changes, atropine eye drops, and more, you can help improve your child’s future quality of life.
Myopia control is an effective way to preserve your child’s eyesight while still giving them clear vision every day. It’s a way to invest in your child’s future vision in a way that truly makes a difference.
Myopia Control Lenses
There are various myopia control lenses, with each lens offering its own unique benefits and features.
Stellest Spectacle Lens
Stellest lenses by Essilor incorporate two focusing powers into each lens, designed with a technology called Highly Aspherical Lenslet Target (HALT).
This incorporates more than 1,000 invisible miniature lenslets into each lens, creating a lens that offers clear vision while simultaneously redirecting light to slow myopia progression. These lenses can slow myopia by up to 67% when worn 12 hours a day, making them an advanced, innovative, and effective way to help preserve your child’s vision.
MyoCare Spectacle Lens
ZEISS MyoCare lenses are designed to provide clear vision while simultaneously slowing down the progression of myopia. These specialty eyeglass lenses correct distance vision while defocusing on the periphery of the lenses to manage myopia.
To do so, these lenses incorporate multiple prescriptions into a single lens in a bulls-eye-shaped pattern. The alternating defocus and correction zones help slow the elongation of the eye.
The lenses are comfortable to wear and can be easily integrated into your child’s life. Because they’re tailored towards children, MyoCare lenses also come with an anti-reflective and scratch-resistant coating, making them a popular option!
MiSight Contact Lenses
CooperVision’s MiSight lenses are soft, disposable contact lenses specifically designed for myopia control in children. These lenses use a dual-focus design that corrects distance vision while simultaneously managing myopia progression. MiSight lenses can slow myopia progression by roughly 59%, making them extremely effective.
The dual-focus design consists of alternating concentric rings of vision correction and treatment zones, which help to slow down the eye’s growth. MiSight lenses are convenient for children who prefer contacts over glasses, and since they’re daily disposable lenses, they’re much easier to keep clean.
Myopia Control at Calgary Family Eye Doctors
Along with the various myopia control lens options, there are other methods to manage myopia that Calgary Family Eye Doctors can help with. Our optometrists will thoroughly assess your child’s eyes and recommend the right option to slow the progression and prevent myopia from worsening.
Our eye clinic has invested in the Myah machine that measures the axial length (elongation) of the eyeball to allow us to better track myopia progression.
Should Your Child Try Myopia Control?
If your child is diagnosed with myopia, talk to your eye doctor about myopia control. Our team at Calgary Family Eye Doctors can work with you to find the right solution for your child. Book an appointment with us today, and let’s work together to give your child clear, comfortable vision.
