Posted January 2020

Myopia (nearsighted) Control Contact Lenses

The prevalence of myopia is increasing at an unprecedented rate worldwide, with current estimates at 23% of the world's population and a predicted increase to almost 50% by 2050. In the U.S., prevalence of myopia has nearly doubled from 25% to 42% over the last two generations. The good news is that there are now ways in which the rate of nearsighted can be slowed down in children. One popular and seemingly effective way to slow the rate of myopia in school-aged children is by the way of  speciality soft contact lenses. These are not ordinary contact lenses. These lenses were designed by Cooper Vision specifically to slow down the progression of myopia. In a recent three-year randomized clinical trial with these lenses, investigators found that 41% of the eyes in the children wearing these lenses showed no myopia progression as compared with only 4% of the eyes in children wearing "standard" lenses. In contrast, 62% of the eyes of the children wearing the standard lens had progressed by more than -1.00D as compared with only 18% of the eyes in the children wearing the speciality contact lenses. So these new speciality lenses from Cooper Vision were able to effectively reduce both the progression of myopia and the associated increase in axial length over the 36-month study period. Good news: these lenses were FDA approved late 2019 and will launch in the first quarter of 2020. They will be available in a daily use modality only. We will start fitting these contacts in children who would most benefit from them as soon as they arrive in our practice.