Myopia Control | Lafayette | Luminance Vision

Reduce the Progression of Childhood Myopia

Myopia, also known as nearsightedness, often develops in childhood and becomes progressively worse over time. It causes distant objects to appear blurry, while near objects are seen clearly. However, myopia affects more than eyesight. It also increases the risk of developing future complications, such as retinal detachment and myopic maculopathy.

While there is no cure for myopia, there are ways to help slow its progression, preserving eyesight and eye health. Myopia control encompasses several techniques used to reduce the progression of myopia in children.

Does your child have myopia? Book an appointment with us to discuss how myopia control could benefit them.

Why Consider Myopia Control?

There are many benefits of myopia control. For many patients, myopia control can reduce the frequency of prescription changes and help eyesight stabilize at a lower prescription. This means your child may not need new glasses at every eye exam and will maintain better natural vision.

Myopia control can also help to reduce the risk of myopia-related eye problems. People with high myopia have an increased risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataracts, and myopic degeneration. This risk is caused by eye elongation, a common occurrence in childhood myopia, in which the eye grows too long, leading to worsened vision and weakened eye structures.

Signs Your Child
May Have Myopia

While worsening vision may be obvious to adults, children often lack an understanding of what clear vision should look like. They may believe that everyone sees the way they do and may not express their difficulty in seeing distant objects.

Some signs you can watch for that may indicate your child has myopia or another vision problem include:

Squinting to see
Holding things close to their face
Difficulty seeing at night
Experiencing difficulty in school
Short attention span or difficulty focusing
Frequent complaints of headaches or tired eyes

If you notice any of these signs, bring your child in for a comprehensive eye exam. We can assess their visual acuity (how clearly they can see) and measure refractive errors to determine if they have myopia, even before they can read.

Our Myopia Control
Methods

If your child has myopia, myopia control can help preserve their vision and eye health for the future. Our myopia control methods slow myopia progression by sending signals to the eye to stop growing, preventing elongation, and keeping the eye closer to a normal length.

During their appointment, we’ll discuss with you and your child to determine which myopia control method is the right fit for their lifestyle and preferences. We may also prescribe a combination treatment, which includes either glasses or contact lenses and atropine eye drops.

We prescribe FDA-approved myopia control spectacle lenses that help to slow myopia progression. These lenses work by correcting your child’s vision and sending signals to slow eye growth simultaneously.

The lenses have a central vision area that includes your child’s specific prescription to correct nearsightedness and an outer treatment area that creates peripheral defocus, intentionally focusing peripheral vision in front of the retina, rather than behind it as single-vision lenses do.

We carry FDA-approved myopia control contact lenses. These lenses are considered a style of multifocal contacts because they include multiple prescription powers.

The contact lenses are daily disposable soft lenses that include a central vision area to correct nearsightedness and outer treatment rings that work similarly to myopia control glasses.

Atropine eye drops are used to dilate the pupils. At very low doses, atropine has been shown to slow myopia progression with minimal side effects. As atropine can cause some blurriness, they are administered at night, before bed.

Protect Your Child’s Vision
for the Future

Myopia affects more than clear vision. It can also affect eye growth, leading to serious complications in adulthood.

By completing myopia control treatment during childhood, you can help protect your child from serious eye conditions and preserve their visual clarity for the future. Myopia cannot be reversed, so slowing the progression and stabilizing the vision at a lower prescription is the most effective way to protect eye health.

Book an appointment with our team in Lafayette to learn more about our myopia control methods.

Book Appointment