Your eye operates in much the same way as a camera. Just as the lens of a camera focuses entering light on a piece of film to produce a sharp image, the lens of your eye focuses light on the retina to form a picture that is sent on to the brain. When a refractive error such as myopia is present, it means that your eye cannot focus the incoming light correctly on the retina. As the most common refractive error, myopia means the light reflected off of viewed objects is focused before it reaches the retina. This vision impairment may be the result of the anatomy of the eyeball itself or the fact that the cornea or the lens is excessively curved in relationship to the length of the eyeball.
Although an outright cure for nearsightedness has not been discovered, your eye doctor can now offer a number of treatments that may be able to slow the progression of myopia.
Why should you be interested in myopia control? Because slowing the progression of myopia may keep your child from developing high levels of nearsightedness that require thick, corrective eyeglasses and have been associated with serious eye problems later in life, such as early cataracts or even a detached retina.
Currently, four types of treatment are showing promise for controlling myopia: