Myopia in Children

Technology may be good a thing but it might not portend well for our children’s eyesight.

YOU’VE probably heard this from your parents and you may have used it on your children too: finish your carrots if you want good eyesight. Truth is, no amount of carrots, vitamins or therapy will prevent your child from having to wear spectacles if his vision is impaired.

Usually it is the schoolteacher who picks up on the child’s vision problems and reports it to the parents.

“Parents bring their children to see me when they complain they cannot see the blackboard or get headaches,” says W.S. Lee of Bangsar Optometry in Kuala Lumpur.

In most cases, it’s a case of myopia, also known as short-sightedness, a refractive defect of the eye in which the light entering the eye focuses in front of the retina instead of directly on it.

Ophthalmologist Dr Chin Pik Kee says about 25% of her patients are below 12 years old and they come to her for common problems like refractive errors (especially myopia and astigmatism), eyelid infections (stye, chalazion), allergic conjunctivitis, eye itch, squint and eye injuries.

In 2003, a study in the Gombak area of Kuala Lumpur was conducted by consultant opthalmologist Dr Goh Pik Pin, together with a team of researchers from the Health Ministry and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The results showed that the majority of children who did wear glasses, was mostly for myopia, with or without astigmatism.

The survey on 1,752 schoolchildren between the ages of seven and nine revealed that 31% of Chinese and 13% of Indian kids in the survey have myopia, compared to about 9% of the Malay students.

Astigmatism (inability of the optics of the eye to focus due to an irregular cornea) ranged from as low as 9% for Malays to as high as 31% for the Chinese.

There were some variations with race and environment. For instance, in a similar study in Singapore between 1999 and 2001 on 1,962 schoolchildren, the incidence of myopia was reported at 22% for Malays, 40% for Chinese and 34% for Indians. Astigmatism averaged at more than 40% for all three races.

Lee, however, feels there is no scientific evidence to prove a direct link between genetic or environmental factors, and vision impairment.

“When I looked around my daughter’s primary school, there were maybe less than 70% of schoolchildren wearing glasses.”

On the other hand, Joyce Ng from Perfect Vision, an optometrist for 18 years, noticed that more schoolchildren are wearing glasses.

“When I first started, maybe one in 10 children needed prescription glasses. Now it’s more like four out of 10,” says Ng, who sees an average of 25 children or more per month.

She also observed that myopia among the Chinese was the highest.
“Maybe it has something to do with the way children are taught in school nowadays, especially those in the Chinese stream. They are required to read and write a lot, and perhaps the position they adopt is not good for the eyes.

“There have been studies that show that excessive usage stresses the eye muscle, causing myopia at a faster rate,” she suggests, adding that many of her young customers (in primary school) start at an average of 2.00 diopters.

“Only in rare instances, pathological or degenerative myopia characterised by very high degrees of myopia that’s often hereditary or familial, can lead to blindness. This is not due to the myopic power per se, but because of associated retinal degeneration and other sight-threatening complications. In this situation, normal vision cannot be achieved even with the use of spectacles.”