Many recent studies have found that, most of children spend their average time in a day by using different gadgets like smartphone, playing video games, watching television and using stereo systems. Kids loves to use all these gadgets as they found it very interesting and most of the time parents do allow and practice them to use it. The effect using gadgets on children’s eyes has turned out as an important topic to discuss nowadays.
Without knowing kids do pay attention by spending hours using gadgets and did not realize to their wrong posture, bright screen and screen distance from their actual positions. This may cause an ultimate health and vision problems day by day.
Staring at screen or electronic devices for continuous hours causes distress and various problem involving eyes. Some of them may get irritation in their eyes and in worst case children may even loose their ability to view anything binocularly. By the time, they may even have difficulty to have proper functions in eye muscles and nerves. At this age, we adults may also have issues to face screen for longer hours, imagine if the same thing happen, how do your children would cope with it?
In this era, we can’t keep ourselves or our children away from these devices so we can try to minimize the impact of these devices on our children. Spending our regular times by using gadgets too much may causes vision problems and it may also increase the chances of getting high myopia power. Besides, staring at screens may also reduce our blinking time and it may causes dry eyes in future.
Children who spend more time on screens may also develop speech and language delay. A child with a speech delay might use words and phrases to express ideas but be difficult to understand. Usually they will spend their time alone and love to express themselves as they are in fairy land.
Some children may also have issues with attention deficits. It refers to problems like paying attention, excess activity or has difficulty controlling behaviour which is not appropriate. This can occur in children and cause them to be restless, unable to focus, and easily get distracted. This change in behaviour can cause problem at school or at home as well.
Obviously, not every children are rely on using gadgets nowadays, but it is purely base on how well we are able to control and monitor them on screen usage. We can generally balance their lifestyle and daily activities by allowing them to play outdoor games, set time for screen usage, be more engaged with them and make sure they do have adequate sleep time too.
If you found your children to have anxiety, feel fear to mingle with people around, always experience depressions or any other complaints as above do seek for health care and eye care professionals before it gets more serious.
Nowadays, having healthy eye and clear vision are critical in children. We often came across with children with myopia and amblyopia. We as an eye practitioner recommend parents or guardian to get their children eye tested regularly, as many vision problem and eye diseases can be detected and treated in early phases. Mostly children with myopia and amblyopia has to get their eyes tested and get the proper treatment as soon as possible as this eye problem can be worsen after certain point of time.
Vision test for children
If your children has been diagnosed with myopia is means that they have nearsightedness. It simply means that near vision looks clearer than far vision. It might get worsen if myopia is not treated at early stage but it also can be corrected with visual managements such as corrective ophthalmic lenses, contact lenses, ortho-k, and LASIK surgery.
Animation of eye condition with myopia
Kids with myopia has longer eyeball length from front to back, which causes the light rays to fall at the back of retina. To make the image clearer children may sometimes need to shrink their eyes to reduce the light rays and glare around them to see the image clearer. This eventually will lead the eyeball to elongate day by day and increase in eye power.
Mostly, children may not understand their vision clarity, and some even may accept their blurry vision state as they think that is the best vision they can gain. They might adjust their blur vision status by moving forward to far images to focus it clearly. Eye examination for children can start at 6 months old, 3 years old and before first grade. Also if there is any abnormality found, your children should get their eye tested as soon as possible. Always do follow your eye specialist recommendations for the best advice to care your children eye health.
Signs of children vision problem
Whereas, amblyopia is an eye condition of where your eyes and brain does not work simultaneously as how it suppose to work. Amblyopia also known as lazy eye, of where kids will start develop good vision in one eye and poor vision in the other eye. Children are often get used to this problems, and might not informed to their parents. As a result their lazy eye vision may not be diagnosed for months or even years. Treatment for amblyopia works to correct our eye and brain to function equally and strengthen the vision to be more better. Using prescription lenses, eye patches, atropine drops and surgery are the available treatment for amblyopia.
Eyesight with Amblyopia
Did your children with myopia and amblyopia get their eye tested completely? Do drop by to your nearest outlet and get the best optometrist in town to check your children eyesight now.
*FAQ
What is the most common eye problem in children?
Common pediatric eye problem includes lazy eye, nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, childhood tearing, cortical visual impairment, vision development abnormalities, genetic eye diseases, double vision and nystagmus.
Why do kids have bad eye sight?
The most common vision problem starts when children at school age. Due to refractive errors such as myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism your children will end up to have blurry vision.
How do you know if your children have eye problems?
If you found your children like to squint their eyes, try to move forward to read or see something clearly, rub their eyes constantly, having extreme sensitivities to lights, abnormal eye alignment, and severe red eye do bring your children and visit ophthalmologist or optometrist for further treatments.
At what age does vision fully develop?
Children eye sight will develop fully as they growing up. When they are at age of 4-5 years old their vision is not as perfect as adult. Eyesight will start to be one of the crucial element in our body when we have the ability to co-ordinate our full body movements.
How can I improve my eyesight? What is the perfect vision?
If you have bad eyesight, please do not hesitate to meet your eye practitioner to get the best consultation about your eye status. Perfect eye vision is considered as no vision aid’s is required to see better. Vision acuity with 20/20 or 6/6 known as perfect vision.
Zeiss Myokids is a specially designed progressive addition spectacle lens for children to control the accommodative lag during near vision tasks. The top half of the lenses correct the myopia, provide a clear and shape vision for distance while the bottom active zone simultaneously support near vision tasks.
Carl Zeiss Myopia Control Lenses
Myopia is also known as short-sightedness, a common vision problem where you experience blur vision at distance but can see near objects clearly. It occurs due to long eyeball shape or the lens-cornea system of the eye is too strong. This causes the light rays focusing images in front of retina instead on your retina.
Anatomical view of normal and myopic eye
According to World Health Organisation, in year 2020 it is expected more than 2 billion people is myopic over the world. This is predicted to rise to approximately 5 billion by year 2050. Xiang (2012) stated that the rate of myopic progression among 7 to 15 ages is -0.7 dioptre per year. Besides that, there is a risk for myopes to develop sight-threatening eye diseases such as glaucoma, myopic retinopathy and myopic maculopathy [Vongphanit et al 2002]
When myopic eyes look at near object with a standard lenses, often the eyes try to save energy and do not focus enough (accommodative lag) to bring the light ray back to retina. This will results in a false signal to our eyes to elongate which increase myopia progression.
However, the Zeiss Myokids lenses bottom active zone (addition power) is very effective for near vision tasks by correcting this defocus. This will reduce in progression of myopia. According to Gwiazda (2004) the reduction of accommodative lag is known to result in a potential reduction of myopia progression. This new design, Myokids can reduce the lag of accommodation up to 30% compared to those conventional progressive lenses (Schilling et al 2017). Besides that, this special near vision design also supports the digital life of children nowadays to reduce eyestrain.
Difference between single vision lenses and Myokids lenses
To optimise the function of the myopic control spectacle lenses, we as an optometrist do practice visual hygiene as well. Proper reading distance (not close than 30 centimetres), proper posture and lighting while reading or computing. Advise to take a 2 minutes break for every 30 minutes near vision tasks.
Essilor myopilux is the all-in-one, ideal treatment for children’s myopia.
Myopia is a significant global public health concern since few decades, which were affecting 85% to 90% of young adults in some Asian countries such as Singapore and Taiwan. In a survey of school children in Malaysia, found prevalence of myopia was 42% Chinese and 15% Malay. The prevalence myopis or shortsightedness among Malaysians is said to have reached a ‘concerning’ level, mainly due to lack of public awareness on the importance of going for regular eye checks. (http://www.myhealth.gov.my/en/myopia-shortsighted-nearsightednes
There are currently several options available to manage shortsightedness. They can be classified according to their ability to correct and slow myopia progression during childhood as shown in the figure below:
Myopilux is the ideal treatment for children to correct myopia, besides controlling its evolution. Research has found that Myopilux successfully reduced myopia evolution by up to 62%. In addition, Myopilux is a trustworthy and safe, non-invasive solution that has been designed for myopic children by international experts of myopia.
Myopilux are specialized prescription lenses that help correct far vision and reduce strain for near vision. This lens corrects and controls Myopia, all at the same time. It is superior to single vision lenses, which only corrects far vision without helping to reduce strain on near vision.
Myopilux lenses are available in two designs – Myopilux Max and Myopilux Plus.
Myopilux Plus
Myopilux Plus is progressive lenses specially designed for kids, taking into account the eye anatomy, facial anatomy and ergonomics. These lenses offer a wide range of vision and provide posture comfort.
Myopilux Max
Myopilux Max is prismatic bifocal lenses recommended for exophoric patients. They provide the widest field of vision for a myopic child. The upper part of the lens caters to the prescription and the bottom part of the lens carries a prismatic reading addition power. There is a line separating the upper and bottom halves of the lens.
Benefits for using Myopilux lens:
Non-invasive
Stabilize myopia
Better social life
For more information drop by Malaya Optical as we have optometrists who are specialized in children eye care.
Orthokeratology, also known as Ortho-K is a non-surgical procedure of reshaping the cornea gently while you sleep, with a specially designed therapeutic gas permeable contact lens. This type of contact lenses can have a successful fitting by correcting the refractive error, primarily myopia (near-sighted) but astigmatism and hyperopia (long-sighted). Ortho-K sometimes called corneal reshaping (CR), corneal refractive therapy or even vision shaping.
Ortho-K lenses gradually change the cornea curvature overnight to reduce corneal refractive power, resulting in images being focused on the retina. The successful of Ortho-k fitting occurs as vision will be improved after remove the lenses without the needs of wearing any glasses or contact lenses during the day.
Process of cornea reshaping in overnight
The main objective of Ortho-K is help to slow down myopia progression in children. The myopia epidemic in Asia is evident because the prevalence of high myopia among young adults is higher among Asian (6.8% – 21.6%) compared to non-Asian populations (2.0% – 2.3%). [YL Wong et al 2016]
Besides that, Ortho- K lenses is a non-surgical and reversible vision correction treatment. For those children who wish spectacle free during day time activities but too young for LASIK, Ortho-K is the most suitable option. Ortho-K is a specially designed gas permeable contact lens which offers high oxygen transmission to maintain eye health.
Jennifer (2018) stated that when Ortho-K used for partial or full correction of myopia, has been shown to slow down myopic progression in children by 35-56 % as compared to controlled group who wearing spectacle or contact lenses.
Example of successful Ortho-K fitting
The criteria for Ortho-K including myopia below -6.00D and astigmatism below -2.00D. Children and teenagers with myopia progression (power increment) are suitable for Ortho-K treatment. Individuals who are active in sport, individual whose occupation do not encourage eyewear. Ortho-K is another best alternative to LASIK. Compliance and independent characteristics is very important as well.
Ortho-K is a specially designed gas permeable contact lens that wears overnight to reshape the corneal curvature and correct the refractive error which provide a spectacle free clear vision to carry on dailies activities. For more information, do contact your best optometrist in KL
High myopia is exactly like what it sounds like, a high degree of nearsightedness or short-sighted. This eye condition is a relatively severe level of short-sightedness that can lead or be associated with significant eye health complications.
A new concern among parents nowadays emerges as the numbers of children who are short-sighted or myopic has been increasing year after year. The questions of is my child short-sighted? Why is she short-sighted? How can I help my child?
The percentage of the human population who has myopia also referred to as “Rabun Jauh” or Shortsightedness is increasing day by day. It is expected that the percentage will continue to increase. In the future, it is expected that half of the human population will have myopia.
