How to avoid premature myopia in children?

  Missing these two critical periods will miss the golden period for the treatment of these two diseases and cause irreparable regret forever. The sum of the incidence of these two eye diseases accounts for more than 90% of pediatric eye diseases, which shows the magnitude of their coverage and harmfulness. Parents of children with myopia or amblyopia should feel this more deeply, so parents must be aware of the early examination and prevention of their children’s eyes.  As an optometrist who has been working in optometry for more than 10 years and has seen tens of thousands of myopic children, the parents of myopic children have touched me most deeply by the following four “almosts”: almost every parent of a child diagnosed with true myopia comes to the hospital only when they find that their child sees something abnormal or when the child says he or she cannot see; almost every parent of a child diagnosed with true myopia comes to the hospital only when the child says he or she cannot see. Almost every parent of a child diagnosed with true myopia has no awareness of early detection and prevention; almost every parent of a teenager who learns that there is no treatment for true myopia before the age of 18 and that the prescription will increase year by year wants to trade their own eyes for their child’s; almost every parent who reluctantly, but without choice, puts glasses on their child’s eyes.  Every time I see parents helpless and doctors helpless, I wonder how to avoid this heartbreaking situation to the greatest extent possible through my own efforts, and through what means can each young parent get timely information about the importance of their child’s eyes: the key to myopia is prevention, and prevention is better than cure, and the critical period for detecting pseudomyopia is from the age of five to six, and the prevention of myopia should start at the age of three. Myopia in children and adolescents is the most dangerous disease for children’s eye health. Currently, myopia is becoming more prevalent and progressive at a younger age, and some children in kindergarten are already nearsighted, so the age of myopia prevention should be significantly advanced.        If a child develops myopia too early, it will cause a lot of pain in the child’s life. First, there is no treatment for true myopia in young children; second, myopia will continue to grow, and the younger the age, the faster the development, the average annual development rate of national statistics is about 100 degrees, resulting in many children finally forming high myopia, or even severe myopia; third, after a high degree of myopia, there will be a lot of complications, such as retinal Myopia complications such as retinal detachment, vitreous clouding, glaucoma, macular degeneration (the human eye is to see through the macula), posterior scleral staphyloma, etc.  The prevalence of amblyopia is nearly 4%, which is quite high. Some children with amblyopia have abnormalities that are easier for parents to detect, but there is a type of amblyopia that is very concealed and cannot be seen from the outside, which is refractive amblyopia (a type of monocular amblyopia), and this type of amblyopia is so concealed that most of them are only discovered after the age of twelve, but it is too late at that time, resulting in the tragic reality that only one eye can see clearly.        The best time to treat amblyopia is between the ages of four and six; after the age of eight, the effect is worse, and after the age of twelve, it cannot be cured, so amblyopia is an eye disease that must be treated before vision development stops (before the age of 12), which highlights the importance of early detection of amblyopia. The effects of amblyopia are most evident especially in school, military recruitment, police recruitment, civil service exams, and driver’s license exams.