Updates on Optical Strategies of Myopia Control

Abstract

Myopia has become a pandemic disease in the past few years and its sight-threatening consequences associated with high myopia have been a challenging issue for most public health societies. Controlling myopia progression has also become a global concern for many people particularly, parents of myopic children. Accordingly, a large body of work has been devoted to considering different optical and non-optical methods to prevent or retard myopia progression. Different optical strategies such as sunder correction, monofocal spectacles or contact lenses, bifocal or progressive spectacle lenses, multifocal contact lenses, gas-permeable (GP) contact lenses, and orthokeratology (ortho-K) have been proposed to slow down the myopia progression. Although the effectiveness of these treatment strategies has been vastly studied, there are some debates concerning the most efficient method in controlling myopia progression. The present study reviewed the current optical therapies to control the progression of myopia. A literature review revealed that optical strategies, such as myopic under correction, monofocal spectacles or contact lenses, GP contact lenses, and bifocal and multifocal spectacle lenses did not provide a clinically significant reduction in myopia progression. In contrast, ortho-K and newly introduced multifocal soft contact lenses may significantly slow myopia progression.