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A pioneering
vision correction facility in the US has shown that using contact lenses on babies may offer the hope for a
cure for childhood myopia.
Eye specialists from the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, regularly use contact lenses, which can be used as a potential
cure for childhood myopia, to treat a variety of eye conditions in children, but what is pioneering about their work is that many of the patients using the lenses are virtually as newborns.
Dr Mark Borchert, head of the contact lens programme at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said that the brain's visual pathway does not fully develop until a person reaches the age of about eight.
As a result, finding a
cure for childhood myopia early on could prevent patients from suffering from vision problems as they get older.
"If you don't have a focused image going to the brain in the first couple years of life, you won't develop vision in one or both eyes," Dr Mark Borchert claimed.
One in five premature babies suffer from eye development problems that require some form of
vision correction and the hospital uses contact lenses in babies as young as three-weeks old.
The treatment process used at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles is unusual in that conditions, such as myopia, are normally diagnosed in children much later.
However, research has shown that late diagnosis of myopia can lead to severe problems - highlighting the need for regular eye checks.
One
vision correction system which is used as a potential
cure for childhood myopia in people who have not been wearing contact lenses since birth is i-GO's Ortho K corrective lenses - which are worn overnight and gently reshape the eye while the wearer sleeps.
Ortho K lenses can arrest the progression of myopia in both young people and adults and they have none of the permanent side effects associated with
corrective laser surgery.
Children's vision: Is your child suitable for i-GO over night Contact Lenses?
Written by Carl Clarkson
