As the new school year approaches, parents wonder how to ensure their children’s well-being – they buy the necessary items and go to the doctors to check on their health. But unfortunately, a large amount of information at school raises visual concerns. We talk to Irina Kozlovskaya, an ophthalmologist at the Lirema Eye Clinic, about modern children’s most common vision problems, what causes them, and how to stop them.
What child vision problems do you face most often?
When working with children, we usually encounter myopia, farsightedness, or astigmatism Farsightedness and astigmatism are typically innate and do not change much, but myopia is currently rising, and more than 50% of children with this problem visit ophthalmologists.
Regarding acute illnesses, the most common eye inflammation is conjunctivitis, especially allergic, but we also deal with bacterial or viral inflammation. We have also recently seen our little patients with dry eyes, which was almost non-existent before, and now there is as much as 10 percent of all of them. Of course, myopia and dry eye can be blamed mainly on lifestyle without limiting children’s time on smart screens, but it cannot be said that disease trends are only getting worse. There is also a good aspect: modern children are less likely to suffer severe eye injuries, especially in the last ten years.
What promotes the development of these disorders?
Farsightedness and astigmatism are usually unaffected by the child’s development period after birth, as these disorders are traditionally congenital due to heredity or harmful parental habits. But myopia is different. It begins to develop at school age when the child is 8-10 years old and can progress to 25 years. In the past, the age at which it appeared was later, and vision usually deteriorated in adolescents. The progress of myopia is being observed all over the world, especially in Asian countries, where it even has a name – The Myopia Boom.
Funding for myopia research is increasing as the situation spirals out of control. It is believed that the parents’ myopia can also play a role, but it is not yet clear whether it is heredity or a hereditary lifestyle. One of the factors that can cause it is education – each school year adds approximately half a dioptre. Reading books should be excluded because viewing is less than 30 cm. distance also affects the deterioration of vision – if a child likes to read, his gaze should be removed from the text every half hour. It is also worth paying attention to the pressure in educational institutions – when a child needs to absorb crazy amounts of information. He forgets even to move. The other is living in the city, where pollution is high, and on weekends children are left with grandmothers who, not having enough energy to spend time with their grandchildren, allow them to spend hours with games and movies in front of the screens. It is also essential to educate children about healthy nutrition from an early age – this also significantly impacts eye health.
How protect children from visual impairments?
Minimal myopia is not terrible. It can be corrected with glasses and contact lenses, and at the age of 18, laser vision correction can be performed. There is a fear of a higher degree of myopia, 5-6 diopters when there is an increased risk of macular degeneration, glaucoma, and retinal tears or detachments. In this case, even with the best correction methods, the vision will not be perfect.
When myopia is noticed to progress, immediate action should be taken. The sooner we pay attention to this, the sooner we can stop the process. Children often do not consciously realise that their vision is impaired and will not come and admit it. They begin to rub their eyes as they look into the distance, so their behaviour should be monitored closely. The most important thing is to spend at least two hours outdoors while exploring the environment, which significantly reduces the risk of myopia and the negative impact of close work on vision and the likelihood of its development when both parents are myopic. Parents should come up with an incentive to make the child want to go outside – perhaps to help make new friends, get interested in activities the child hasn’t tried before, such as petanque, badminton or soap bubbles – just to give enough time to find what the child would like.
As for low farsightedness, it is normal for children and does not cause complaints. Higher farsightedness is a risk factor for eye strabismus or laziness. Small patients are monitored to see if myopia is reduced or if specific protective measures are needed. To prevent eye laziness, follow your doctor’s instructions – wear glasses or cover one eye.
It is fun to check that treating children’s eye diseases worldwide coincides with frequently participating in international conferences. Lithuania is going step by step with everyone – the same methods are used in other countries. New ways are constantly being sought, and it is becoming clear what results can be expected in the future by adopting one or another practice. I bring innovations in other areas of ophthalmology where I don’t work directly. Some skin diseases can be successfully treated with eye drops or certain serious eye diseases directly linked to pediatric infectious diseases, and the application of vaccines reduces such conditions. To prevent vision problems in children, a preventive examination should be performed once a year, and the doctor’s instructions should be followed to treat existing visual disorders.