Current status of myopia prevalence among adolescents
With the increasing demand for health, good visual status has become an important reflection of people’s improved quality of life. However, myopia, the most common form of poor visual function, is widely prevalent worldwide.
Myopia is a major problem in China, with about 30-40% of elementary school students suffering from myopia, 60% of students in secondary schools having myopia glasses, and up to 80% of college students having myopia prevalence.
The basic pathological change of myopia is the excessive growth of the eye axis, like a balloon over-inflated, and may cause other complications, such as cataract, glaucoma, retinal detachment, choroidal atrophy, choroidal neovascularization and fundus hemorrhage, which can lead to blindness in severe cases.
Myopia in adolescents is the number one risk factor for adolescents’ health and has become a “flooding beast” for the whole society, so the prevention and treatment of myopia in adolescents has become an important health issue for the whole society.
Causes of myopia in adolescents
There are many causes of myopia, mainly environmental factors and genetic factors. A large number of surveys have shown that environmental factors such as small living space, close vision distance, and increased working hours at near-eye distance can trigger myopia.
We often encounter parents who are nearsighted and children who wear glasses at a very young age, and children who are not yet of school age but are also nearsighted at a young age, which indicates that myopia is closely related to genetics.
However, the genetic factors of myopia are complex, and there are various possibilities such as dominant, recessive and polygenic inheritance.
Unfortunately, the specific mechanism that causes myopia is still unclear, and it is usually believed that the earlier the onset of myopia, the greater the genetic factor, while with the continuous progress of social civilization, longer education time, the popularity of television, the popularity of computer network games, less sleep time, and the corresponding outdoor long-distance activities such as travel, soccer and other activities are greatly reduced. All these environmental factors may be related to the occurrence of myopia.
Myopia prevention and control misconceptions among adolescents
The high prevalence of myopia in adolescents has alerted society and families.
However, there are two types of misconceptions in the field of myopia prevention and treatment. One, some parents are overly concerned about their children’s myopia, and even individual parents believe that myopia will affect their children’s lives, treating myopia like a tiger, with the typical characteristics of “myophobia”, taking their children around to major hospitals, seeking help from a variety of myopia treatment clinics, and trying various myopia treatment instruments and drugs at any cost. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
Catering to the “myophobic” mentality of these people, the market is now flooded with myopia treatment devices, and Chinese teenagers have become the largest experimental group for myopia treatment.
On the contrary, some parents think that their children’s myopia is just a trivial matter, so they can just buy glasses from home opticians and wear them without going to a regular hospital for examination and without undergoing a strict optometry, resulting in reduced visual quality and visual fatigue, which may lead to amblyopia, strabismus and other related eye disorders in serious cases. In fact, these two views are not the right attitude towards myopia in teenagers.
When a teenager is nearsighted, parents should first take their child to the hospital for an eye exam to rule out other eye disorders, and then perform a dilated eye exam (less than 16 years old) and medical optometry if possible.
The younger the child, the more emphasis must be placed on dilated eye examinations before the first prescription. Usually, pseudomyopia does not require glasses and can be improved with some relaxation methods. In the case of true myopia, the child’s eye axis has grown and there is no clinically proven method to effectively treat this axial myopia.
Therefore, parents should actively treat their children according to their active needs in life and learning.
You should not be afraid that your child will not be able to take off his or her glasses if you put them on. In fact, wearing glasses is to help children to see clearly, wearing glasses or not is not directly related to myopia deepening or not.
Correct prevention and treatment of myopia in adolescents
Since the specific mechanism of myopia pathogenesis is still unclear, it is impossible to establish effective prevention and treatment measures to reduce the occurrence and slow down the development. Even so, we should not give up active myopia prevention and treatment, starting with environmental factors closely related to myopia, paying attention to eye hygiene, actively improving the eye environment and eye nutrition, and reducing visual fatigue.
The following points are worth noting.
Develop good reading and writing habits and maintain proper posture, keep your eyes at a distance of not less than 25-30 cm from books, do not read in a sports car, and take a 5-minute break for every half hour or so of continuous reading (it is best to take a break with eyes closed).
Reduce the burden of study, avoid long hours of reading, writing, surfing the Internet, typing, watching TV, playing video games, staying up late, etc., to maintain adequate sleep. Blink more often or close your eyes for a few minutes every half hour when using the computer.
Improve the visual environment, such as appropriate lighting (not too dark or too bright), improve the contrast of the eyes, increase the size of the object being viewed, reduce the details of the object being viewed and stroboscopic changes, etc.
Improve physical fitness and strengthen physical exercise.
Insist on doing eye exercises.
Pay attention to nutrition, eat more fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin A and vitamin C, etc.
Have regular vision checkups and follow up.
In the active prevention of myopia, once you find that your eyes are nearsighted, you must go to a regular hospital for reasonable optometry. First of all, youngsters younger than 16 years old should have their pupils dilated to rule out pseudo-myopia, and hospitals that are in a position to do so can conduct medical optometry, combining the relationship between obliquity and adjustment, the relationship between the collection and pupillary distance, the dominant eye and binocular balance, to give a better and reasonable prescription for glasses, minimizing visual fatigue and making glasses more comfortable to wear.
With the right prescription, the next step is to get the right pair of glasses. The most common type of myopia correction for teenagers is frame glasses. Frame glasses in the selection to be equipped with a few points to note, first frame glasses plane from the eye surface can not be too far, the appropriate distance of 12 to 15mm, otherwise it will increase the error of frame glasses.
Secondly, reasonable pupil distance, the pupil distance of glasses and eye pupil distance to adapt to each other, otherwise it will increase the prismatic effect of the lens, resulting in an increase in error. Then there is the extracurricular activities of young people can choose resin lenses, to reduce the accidental eye trauma brought by the lenses.
Chinese herbal medicine has a significant effect on relieving visual fatigue and delaying myopia progression.
Recent advances in the prevention and treatment of myopia in adolescents
The high prevalence of myopia worldwide has resulted in a large myopic population, which is harmful to the health of the visual organs and also causes a huge economic cost.
Concern about myopia has become a worldwide health issue. Many studies on myopia prevention and treatment have been carried out at home and abroad, and the main research directions include the role of drugs, RGP and progressive multifocal glasses in preventing the occurrence and development of myopia, which are briefly introduced here.
Among the myopia medications, atropine has been shown to be effective in slowing myopia progression. The retina is rich in M receptors, which play an important role in regulating the growth of the eye and the lengthening of the eye axis.
Atropine is a blocking agent of M receptors, which can block the signal transmission that causes eye growth and eye axis lengthening and inhibit myopia development. If it hits, myopia will develop, but M receptor blockers are like a shield here, blocking the signal from reaching the M receptor, so that the “arrow” cannot hit the “target” and myopia will not Myopia does not occur. However, atropine also has the effect of paralyzing the ciliary muscle and relaxing regulation, which limits its clinical application.
A new drug, pirenzepine, has attracted the interest of researchers to address this situation.
Pirenzepine is a selective M receptor blocker that acts only on retinal M receptors, avoiding the other side effects of atropine and becoming the most promising drug for the treatment of myopia.
In 2003, a phase II clinical trial was started in the United States, and the myopia reduction rate in children reached more than 50% in the 12-month follow-up that has been completed. Now it is ready to enter the phase III clinical trial, and it will be ready for clinical use after the completion of the phase III clinical trial.
Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, optometrists have been systematically studying the effects of RGP on the progression of myopia in children.
The excellent optical properties of RGP may contribute to myopia stabilization. Due to the small sample size, more relevant studies are needed to support the final results.
Research on the effect of progressive multifocal glasses on myopia in students has only been conducted in recent years. in 1999, there were reports from Hong Kong and Taiwan in China showing that progressive glasses had an inhibitory effect on myopia progression.
Since 1996, four schools of optometry in the United States have jointly initiated a multicenter randomized double-blind clinical control study of the effect of progressive lenses on the progression of myopia in adolescents (COMET Program).
The results of the program showed that progressive multifocal lenses were helpful in stopping the progression of myopia in children with delayed accommodation, but were not effective in children with strong accommodation. This suggests that progressive multifocal lenses also have a role in delaying myopia progression.