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Researchers New eye drops stop myopia
For short-sighted people, the early reading of traffic signs, the recognition of a friend on the other side of the street or finding the car in a crowded car park without visual aid is virtually impossible. This defective vision, in which distant objects are imaged in front of the retina and thus only blurred, affects almost every third German. A new study has now found that in children with myopia the progress of eye drops can be partially stopped.
The study was able to show that in children with already existing myopia due to the administration of eye drops with atropine AT for more than one year, the further increase in ametropia was less pronounced than in the control group. "In the future, it could be a goal to prevent children with moderate myopia from getting a high myopia," says Ophthalmologist. Robert Löblich from the Artemis Eye Clinic Frankfurt. "But this does not make the glasses superfluous, the glasses may only be less thick." With the eye drops, therefore, an existing ametropia can not be reduced.
In order to treat nearsightedness, visual aids still have to ensure that the focal length of the eye is lengthened so that the light rays are bundled back to the point of the sharpest vision in the retina, even with a longer eyeball. Normal glasses are often sufficient with so-called minus glasses. If you are bothered by the glasses or you just do not get used to them, contact lenses offer an alternative. Anyone who wants to completely renounce such vision aids, can have his defective vision corrected surgically by a LASIK surgery.
In LASIK, the refractive power of the cornea is treated by means of a cold-light laser so that the focal point - as when wearing a visual aid - again hits the retina. LASIK is considered a very safe method to correct myopia to minus eight diopters. For an eye laser correction in question, the cornea of the patient must not be too thin. For young people under the age of 18, laser treatment is generally unsuitable as their eyes may still change. "With new developments such as femto-LASIK, the procedure has also become even more precise in recent years," explains dr. Commendable. "It also allows corrections for below-average corneal thickness." After surgery, patients no longer need visual aids. But stronger myopia to minus 20 dioptres can be repaired surgically. For this, physicians rely on artificial lenses, which they implant in addition to their own lens in the eye, back. Which method is best suited in the individual case and which advantages and disadvantages there are, the patient and doctor must clarify in a detailed conversation with comprehensive preliminary investigations. (Pm)