What causes refractive error in children?

Parents and friends should pay attention to actively helping their children in life, or remind them to pay attention to protecting their eyesight to avoid refractive errors. There are many reasons for children's refractive errors, such as children not paying attention to the correct posture when reading, writing and walking, and eye problems can all become inducements.

1. Causes of refractive error in children

There are many reasons for refractive error in children, and genetic factors are an important one. For myopia, irrational use of eyes is also a very important reason. Children are in the growth and development period. If they do not pay attention to eye hygiene: incorrect reading and writing posture; poor lighting; the distance between the eyes and the book is too close; reading for too long; reading while walking or riding in a car, etc., they can cause excessive eye fatigue and promote myopia. In addition, with the popularity of smartphones and tablets, looking at mobile phones, computers, and televisions for long periods of time can easily cause myopia.

2. Children with refractive abnormalities and amblyopia

Refractive error in children is an important cause of amblyopia. This is because during the critical period of visual development (1 to 3 years old) and sensitive period, children are not given corrective glasses in a timely and correct manner. The images falling on the retina are always blurred, resulting in the cells on the retina not receiving the correct optical signal stimulation and failing to develop normal visual functions.

3 Treatment of refractive error and amblyopia in children

For amblyopia accompanied by refractive errors, most children are likely to recover to normal through early detection, early treatment and training, but the degree of recovery varies from person to person. For the correction of refractive errors, children under 8 years old often use occlusion therapy, those over 8 years old can wear orthokeratology lenses or frame glasses, and patients over 18 years old can also choose laser surgery. Patients with extreme high refractive error or anisometropia can undergo intraocular lens implantation or replacement.

Tips Covering therapy

Occlusion therapy is one of the simplest, most economical and most effective methods for treating amblyopia in children. Patch therapy is to cover the eye with good vision, forcing the amblyopic eye with poor vision to see things, giving the amblyopic eye the opportunity to use things independently, and promoting the gradual improvement of the amblyopic eye's vision. Including: ① Monocular strict cover method: suitable for children with anisometropic amblyopia and strabismic amblyopia. ② Alternating binocular cover method: suitable for amblyopia caused by refractive error and monocular strabismus. ③ Half-occlusion method: suitable for children whose amblyopic visual acuity rises to above 0.7. ④ Short cover method: It is suitable for those whose amblyopic eye has returned to normal but is still lower than the healthy eye. To consolidate the therapeutic effect, the healthy eye can be covered when doing homework or reading, and not covered at other times.