Dry eye is a common complaint in general optometry, and can occur in children too. How could dry eye in kids influence myopia management? This blog includes detail on the frequency of dry eye in children; causative factors like allergy, medications, binocular vision and screen time; and how dry eye can factor into myopia control options.
How can you tell if your myopia management strategy has been a success? Our new Myopia Profile ‘Managing Myopia Guidelines’ infographics translate research into practice, providing advice on gauging success by both refraction and axial length outcomes. Given that refraction is universally measured in clinical myopia practice, there is particular emphasis on understanding how much refraction change after a year of treatment indicates whether expected efficacy for that intervention has been attained.
Parents can often ask for advice and help with managing screen time for their children. Here we provide a summary of government and health organization screen time guidelines for children, as well as resources for eye care practitioners to use in communication with parents.
Ensuring an accurate refraction is a hallmark of best practice myopia management. Yet refractions in children can present particular challenges. Which technique is most accurate, and when is cycloplegia necessary? Covering acuity measurement, retinoscopy, autorefraction and when and how to employ cycloplegia – here are some tips to achieve the best outcomes, especially for younger children where compliance and participation in testing can be more challenging.
Children are accessing screens at school, around the home and for personal entertainment at younger and younger ages. At the same time, there has been an unprecedented increase in myopia in children, with higher numbers and earlier age of onset. Read about what we do and don’t know about this link; the impact of screen time on binocular vision and dry eye in kids, and guidelines for advice to parents.
如果我们的目标是管理近视,防止它set should be an even more valuable target. How can we consistently identify pre-myopes, explain the concern to parents, and how can we best manage them based on the evidence?
Half of children with high myopia have an underlying systemic condition: ophthalmology co-management, best optical corrections, parental education and eye health monitoring are crucial. It’s also important to offer myopia control strategies while also being aware of the limitations of the evidence base. This blog provides guidance on appropriate ocular health and optical management of children with more than 5-6D of myopia.
Most myopia control intervention studies employing spectacles or atropine enrol from age 6, and most contact lens studies enrol from age 8. So how should we manage myopes younger than this? In this blog we’ll give you some guidance on managing myopes under age 6-7 with low and moderate myopia. Children in this age group with high myopia will require primary eye care as well as ophthalmology care. This important clinical reference includes information on first steps, when and how to prescribe for both myopia correction and control, when to refer or co-manage with ophthalmology, and communication with parents.
Non-responders are those children who have shown minimal efficacy of their treatment in myopia control studies, and it turns out that there’s around 15-20% of children who are classified this way across the major myopia control intervention studies. We look at non-responders in atropine, multifocal and myopia controlling contact lens, orthokeratology and DIMS spectacle lens studies, and what factors non-responders share across these studies.
When myopia progression seems to be faster than expected for a myopia control treatment, various factors can be at play, such as non-compliance, user error, high myopia, binocular vision, visual environment. Or you may have a non-responder on your hands. What should you do? Read more here.
