Bill Harvey: Stemming the flood of myopia

Much of this week’s clinical section has been given over to a review paper by Professor Philip Morgan which offers a useful and up-to-date review of the efforts to intervene in the progression of myopia.

The full reference list has been included because this is one of several areas where it is essential to keep to the facts, rather than the more anecdotal or opinion-led, when parents are asked about ways they might help their children when myopia is first discussed.

This is sometimes prompted by an article in the mainstream press that perhaps has tended to the sensational or even erroneous. I remember a feature on breakfast TV a few years ago led viewers to believe that deliberate under-correction of myopia by optometrists had hastened myopic progression.