About 2 percent of Americans are afflicted, and degenerative myopia is a leading cause of legal blindness.
Myopia typically develops during the early school years and tends to progress more rapidly in pre-teens than in older teenagers. This is why myopia control studies usually involve relatively young children.
While it’s true that myopia also can develop and progress in young adults, this is less common. And it’s possible that an adult’s eyes may not respond to myopia control treatments the same way a child’s eyes do. For these reasons, it’s likely that most research on controlling myopia progression will continue to focus on nearsighted children rather than adults.
In most cases, nearsightedness is simply a minor inconvenience and poses little or no risk to the health of the eye. But sometimes myopia can be so progressive and severe it is considered a degenerative condition.
Degenerative myopia (also called malignant or pathological myopia) is a relatively rare condition that is believed to be hereditary and usually begins in early childhood.
About 2 percent of Americans are afflicted, and degenerative myopia is a leading cause of legal blindness.
In malignant myopia, the elongation of the eyeball can occur rapidly, leading to a quick and severe progression of myopia and loss of vision. People with the condition have a significantly increased risk of retinal detachment and other degenerative changes in the back of the eye, including bleeding in the eye from abnormal blood vessel growth (neovascularization).
Degenerative myopia also may increase the risk of cataracts. Surgical treatment for complications of degenerative myopia includes a combination drug and laser procedure called photodynamic therapy that also is used for the treatment of macular degeneration.
Also, a recent pilot study found that an oral medicine called 7-methylxanthine (7-mx) was effective in slowing the elongation of the eye in nearsighted children ages 8 to 13. Studies of this type might eventually lead to an effective medical treatment for degenerative myopia.
You no doubt have seen or heard advertisements on television and the Internet that claim eye exercises can reverse myopia and correct your eyesight “naturally.”
Some of these eye exercise programs recommend you ask your eye doctor to write you an eyeglasses prescription that intentionally under-corrects your nearsightedness for full-time wear as an adjunct treatment to performing the exercises.
Undercorrection of myopia is ineffective at slowing myopia progression and may in fact increase the risk of nearsightedness getting worse
The claim is that the exercises and undercorrection of your myopia will reduce your nearsightedness, so you will need less vision correction as time goes on.
It’s worth noting here that research has shown undercorrection of myopia is ineffective at slowing myopia progression and may in fact increase the risk of nearsightedness getting worse.
Also, intentional undercorrection of myopia causes blurred distance vision, which may put your child at a disadvantage in the classroom or in sports and affect their safety.
Source.Allaboutvision
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