Myopia Management

Bring the Horizon Into Focus

Your child deserves crisp, clear vision at all points in life. However, a common eye condition known as myopia can affect how clear their sight is when they grow up, blurring their vision and affecting how they play sports, watch movies, or read small print.

Find out how our team can help your child manage the effects of myopia and see how far their vision can go.

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What Is Myopia?

Myopia, much more commonly known as nearsightedness, is a refractive error that blurs your distance vision as you age. Myopia occurs as the eye elongates or the cornea becomes too curved over time, which prevents light that enters the eye from focusing properly on the retina.

The exact cause of myopia isn’t known, but researchers have found that genetics, long periods of up-close work, and little time spent outdoors could contribute to its development. Currently, about 30% of all Americans have some degree of myopia, but studies suggest that half of the entire world’s population will have myopia by 2050.

Myopia & Your Children

One of the reasons we focus so much on managing myopia is how early children can develop it. Children as young as 6 can develop myopia, and their symptoms can progress into their adult years.

In some cases, your child may develop high myopia, which could also increase their risk of:

The key to managing your child’s myopia is to start as early as possible. By the time your child enters school, please ensure they have annual eye exams, as this will be the best way to detect myopia before it affects your child’s vision too much.

Monitoring Axial Length

Axial length is the measurement of the eye from front to back. In children with myopia, the eye’s axial length increases faster than normal. When the eye becomes too elongated, light can’t properly focus on the retina, resulting in blurred distance vision.

At The Vision Therapy Institute, we use innovative technology to monitor myopia progression through axial length growth charts. These charts allow us to:

Displays a visual representation of myopia progression
Predict the development of myopia or high myopia
Determine an individualized treatment plan
Monitor treatment progress by watching for a slowdown in eye elongation

Each child’s eye is unique, and using an axial length growth chart reflects that. This technology helps us provide each patient with the correct treatment to suit their needs and slow down myopia progression.

Our Management Techniques

There are several different ways to manage and correct myopia aside from glasses and traditional contact lenses. We are proud to deliver various myopia management techniques, but we’ll first need to perform an eye exam to ensure the treatment is right for your child’s needs.

Please feel free to ask us about your child’s myopia and what we can do to help!

Orthokeratology

Orthokeratology, ortho-k is a custom contact lens treatment that gently reshapes your child’s cornea as they sleep. Reshaping the cornea helps focus light on your child’s retina to provide them with clear vision throughout the day while also slowing down myopia progression.

MiSight 1 day Contact Lenses

MiSight 1 day contacts use a unique lens design that includes rings of peripheral defocus. While providing your child with clear vision, these lenses also focus peripheral light just in front of the retina using concentric zones around the contact. By focusing peripheral light in front of the retina, these lenses can help slow down myopic progression.

NaturalVue Contact Lenses

NaturalVue multifocal lenses use multiple prescription zones to achieve peripheral defocus, like with MiSight contact lenses. The difference between these lenses is that NaturalVue contacts focus both peripheral and central light to help create a wide range of clear vision.

Low-Dose Atropine Eye Drops

Low-dose atropine eye drops (0.01%) can help effectively slow myopia progression in children with minimal side effects.

Make Life a Little Clearer

Myopia can change the quality of your child’s vision, but we can help ensure that it doesn’t change the quality of their life. If you’re ready to see how our management techniques can serve your child, please request an appointment with us today.

Request Appointment