Benefits of Early Eye Exams for Children

Jul 18

By: Dr. Iravani

The sun is out, the days are longer, and kids are out of school. Summertime is the perfect time to get all of your children’s doctor’s appointments done and taken care of before the new school year starts. On that list of appointments should be their annual eye exam with their eye care provider. As parents, one of our top priorities is ensuring our children’s health and well-being, including their eye health and vision development.

The American Optometric Association recommends that children have their first comprehensive eye exam before 1 year, again at 3 years, and before starting school and every year thereafter. Like all things with children, things develop and change quickly, including their eyes. Undiagnosed vision issues can significantly impact their learning, social development and overall quality of life. Early detection of such issues will help your child to have a great start in life.

Benefits of Early Eye Exams

Early Detection: Identifying issues like amblyopia (lazy eye) or strabismus (crossed eyes) early can prevent permanent vision loss.
Academic Success: Undetected vision problems can greatly affect a child’s ability to learn and read. Early detection ensures they have the visual tools they need to succeed in school.
Social development: Good vision is essential for children to interact with their environment and peers effectively, supporting healthy social development

Understanding common vision problems is the first step in safeguarding your child’s visual health. Some of the most prevalent issues include:

Refractive errors: myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), and astigmatism all affect a child’s ability to see clearly at different distances. Corrective spectacle lenses or contact lenses are used to treat these conditions.
Amblyopia: commonly referred to as “lazy eye” is a condition that occurs when one eye does not develop properly resulting in reduced vision and is often the result of different refractive errors between the two eyes or an eye turn. Early intervention is key to effective treatment to ensure both eyes see equally well as your child continues to grow.
Strabismus (crossed eyes): misalignment of the eyes can lead to vision problems such as amblyopia and depth perception issues. It can also have a negative impact on social development due to concern for cosmetic appearances of the eye turn.
Convergence insufficiency: The eyes have difficulty working together on near tasks, causing blurry or double vision, making reading and other near activities challenging and uncomfortable.

Symptoms of any of the above conditions can include squinting, tilting the head to see better, frequent eye rubbing, and complaints of headaches and eye strain. One key symptom most commonly overlooked is the child’s dislike or disinterest in reading. Parents often assume that kids just aren’t doing well in school because they don’t like to read, but it is often due to a vision-related disorder instead.

Another large concern for parents is the worsening of the child’s vision over time, especially those who are nearsighted. In the US, the average rate of increase in children is about 0.50 D (½ of a diopter) per year. A diopter is the unit of measurement used when talking about how much nearsightedness or farsightedness a person has. To give an example, assuming a child follows the average rate of progression, if a child comes in for their first eye exam at age 8 and has -1.00 D of myopia, it is likely that the child’s nearsightedness will continue to increase to become -5.00 D of myopia by age 16, which is very nearsighted. Along with having very blurry vision at a distance, that child will also have an increased risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma, and other conditions that can permanently cause vision loss.

Ways to Slow Down Myopia

There are a lot of things parents can do now to help their child reduce their rate of progression if they are already nearsighted. These include:

Myopia Control: there are a variety of treatment options available now that may be best suited for your child. The most commonly used are the following.

MiSight® - this is an FDA approved soft contact lens that has been clinically proven to slow down the rate of progression.
Ortho-keratology lenses - this is a hard contact lens that your child can sleep in overnight to help reshape their cornea while they sleep and remove in the morning upon waking. Myopia control with this lens is an off-label use of this device.
Low-dose atropine - a once daily eye drop used at night time.This is an off-label use of this medication

Limiting screen time to 1-2 hours per day if possible and ensuring that your child is keeping the screen at least 13 inches or 25 centimeters away from their eyes.
Spending time outdoors: evidence shows that children who spend at least 2 hours outdoors daily have a reduced risk of myopia and myopia progression.

Whether your child has yet to have their first comprehensive eye exam or has been going for the past five years, now is the time to get their eyes rechecked to ensure their eye health and visual development is appropriate. Many times, vision issues are silent or children are simply unaware and issues don’t seem related to vision, so it is important for individuals of all ages to have their annual eye exam to ensure nothing is being missed, especially in this new digital age we are living in.

To schedule an appointment, call 949-549-4777

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