Myopia Control | Howard Optometry

Help Prevent a Prescription Heavy Future for Your Child

Myopia is a common issue in America — 40% of the population is nearsighted, and 25% of parents have a child with myopia. This condition not only affects your child’s vision, but it can also affect their ocular health in the future. Myopia progression can affect your child’s eye health and vision, but our team is here to help.

Visit one of our locations, and we can help care for your child’s vision and eye health. Our team has the technology to diagnose and treat this condition as early as possible.

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What Is Myopia?

Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a condition where faraway images look blurry, and close-up objects appear clearly. Your child may struggle with headaches, blurry vision, or unawareness of distant objects if they have undiagnosed myopia.

If your child has myopia, their eyes cannot bend light properly as it enters their eye. A patient with myopia has eyes that are too long, or their cornea has a steep curvature, causing light to focus in front of the retina instead of on the retina as it should.

Other factors can contribute to myopia development, increasing the risk of this condition, including:

What Is Myopia Progression?

Myopia tends to progress as children age, causing a potentially mild form of myopia to worsen into a more severe version. This progression happens because children’s eyes grow as they age. As myopia worsens, it can become high myopia, a condition where a patient needs -5.00 diopters of vision correction or higher.

Besides worsened vision, high myopia increases the risk of several eye conditions, including:

Treating Myopia

When addressing myopia, treatment goes beyond vision correction. We cannot prevent myopia progression with regular glasses, but specialized treatments can help. One way we do this is with atropine eye drops.

Atropine eye drops help relax the focusing mechanisms in the eye. The drops freeze the muscles responsible for operating your child’s lens and iris.

Relaxing your child’s focusing efforts can help slow myopic progression, protecting their vision. Previous research has found that low doses of atropine can effectively treat myopia progression.

We’re Here for Your Child’s Vision

While myopia can seem insignificant right now, it can affect your child’s vision in the future. Early action can help protect your child from worsened vision and an increased risk of eye disease.

Book an appointment if your child has symptoms of myopia, and we can help treat this condition.