World Sight Day: Protecting young people's good "sight"

Oct. 13 is this year's World Sight Day. Experts point out that in recent years, the high incidence of myopia, amblyopia, strabismus and other eye diseases in children and adolescents threatens children's eye health and needs urgent attention. To protect the eyesight of children and adolescents, families, schools and medical institutions need to form a joint effort to build a network to protect the eyesight of children and adolescents.

"The trend of low age of myopia in children is worrying." Professor Yang Zhikuan, a doctoral supervisor at Zhongnan University's Aier Eye Institute, said that in recent years, due to long hours of watching electronic products such as cell phones and tablet computers and lack of outdoor activities, myopia is high among young children and the trend is toward younger ages.

Yang Zhikuan said that some parents have the misconception that their children's myopia can be reversed and do not take their children to regular hospitals for eye examinations and glasses, but try various prescriptions for their children. In fact, once the child is diagnosed with myopia, we must promptly under the guidance of a professional physician prescription lenses to control or delay the development of myopia, to avoid the development of high myopia.

In response to parents' concerns about the deepening of their children's myopia, Yang Zhikuan said there is a characteristic of myopia in young children that myopia tends to continue to progress until it reaches a stable stage around the age of 18, so parents should help their children use scientific methods to slow down the rate of myopia deepening.

"In addition to myopia, common eye diseases in children include strabismus and amblyopia." Wang Hua, director of ophthalmology at Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, told reporters that parents should be alert to the possibility of strabismus in their children if they find that both eyes cannot look forward at the same time. Strabismus can also lead to amblyopia, and amblyopic children who are not treated in time usually cause irreversible damage to the visual function of both eyes.

The first thing you need to do is to get your child's eyesight screened after 3 months of age, and to establish a refractive file early, and to screen the eyesight of premature children after the first month of life. 0 to 3 years old is a critical period for children's vision development, and it is difficult to detect children with myopia and astigmatism in time, so parents should be aware of common eye diseases in children and adolescents, and should take their children to the doctor if they find any abnormalities in their eyes.

"One of the most effective measures to reduce the incidence of myopia is to bathe in sunlight. Experts call for the protection of young children's eyesight requires the joint efforts of families, schools and medical institutions. Parents should help their children develop good eye habits from an early age, to avoid premature contact with cell phones, tablet computers, more children to participate in outdoor activities; schools should arrange physical education classes scientifically, to ensure that students in the outdoor physical exercise time, to help students enhance physical fitness and prevent myopia; large medical institutions can regularly arrange ophthalmologists to the grassroots to carry out lectures and treatment, to help improve the level of prevention and control of myopia in children at the grassroots level.