By Jacqui Mayhew 

Overnight vision correction  is a new non-surgical way of correcting short-sightedness and providing perfect natural vision all day long without glasses or daytime contact lens wear. However, its ability to not only correct short-sightedness but also to prevent a person's prescription from worsening any further as demonstrated in various research studies may prove to be an important means of reducing the risk of contracting glaucoma in later life. This follows an aggregation study involving tens of thousands of people published in the June 2011 edition of Opthalmology which reported on the link between short-sightedness and open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of the disease.

The study was led by Dr Nomdo Jansonius at the University Medical Centre in Groningen, The Netherlands and incorporated data from eleven previous studies to provide its large population base. Based on this large data sample, the study concluded that short-sighted people were around 90% more likely to develop open-angle glaucoma than those with normal vision and the risk factor increased the greater the individual's level of short-sightedness. In this respect, the study results suggest that any treatment such as overnight vision correction  which aimed at correcting short-sightedness and which also was able to halt the further progression of the condition could significantly lower the risk of an individual subsequently developing glaucoma.

Whilst the study did not propose that the link between short-sightedness and glaucoma was causal - that is, one condition caused or led to the other - their coexistence to such a substantial extent is of great significance. In essence, being short-sighted appears to mean that there is almost double the risk of developing glaucoma in later years. Hence regular eye checks are extremely important to ensure short-sightedness is corrected and further deterioration in visual acuity prevented as far as possible. With overnight vision correction , the use of small custom-designed contact lenses which are only worn while sleeping not only corrects short-sightedness but also acts like a dental brace to prevent further elongation of the eye and hence a worsening of the condition.

Check if you are suitable for overnight ortho-k corrective contact lenses .