There are so many children with myopia, is there no need to take it too seriously?

In our country, the overall myopia rate among children and adolescents has reached 52.7%, more than half. In high school, it exceeds 80%. Indeed, myopia is quite common among Chinese children and adolescents. It is unnecessary for parents to be overly anxious or even worried because their children are myopic. However, it is even more unacceptable to not take children's myopia seriously, not take any correction or control measures, and think that "at worst, I can just have myopia surgery when I grow up."

In this article, Dr. Jingcai talks about the dangers of myopia in children and adolescents. As usual, this is purely for popular science, no deception, no selling, please feel free to read.

First, the impact on the child and his family. The biggest problem with myopia is that it causes decreased vision and blurred vision, and requires glasses to correct to normal vision. This may lead to:

Affect children's normal study and activities.

Some children are tall and sit in the back of the class, but because of myopia, they may not be able to see the blackboard clearly; myopic children often take longer to complete the same amount of homework than children with normal vision;

Some children are active and like various sports activities. Wearing glasses will obviously make it inconvenient for them to participate in activities, which will affect their outdoor activity time. Lack of sufficient outdoor activity time in the sun is itself a high-risk factor for myopia, which creates a vicious cycle.

Affects children's personality and psychological development.

Especially for young children, myopia makes them seem "different" among their classmates and friends, which may cause them to be withdrawn and avoid socializing, thus affecting their personality and psychological development.

Affects the application for professional examinations, and thus affects professional employment in the future. Take the college entrance examination as an example, the application for a large number of majors may be affected by myopia. For example:

- If the naked eye vision of either eye is less than 5.0, then you are not eligible to apply for majors such as flight technology, navigation technology, fire engineering, criminal science and technology, and reconnaissance;

- If the naked eye vision of any one eye is lower than 4.8, then you are not eligible to apply for the majors of marine engineering, sports training, traditional ethnic sports, cooking and nutrition, cooking technology, etc.;

- Admission requirements for public security colleges and universities: The naked visual acuity of the left and right eyes should be above 4.9 (0.8) for science majors and above 4.8 (0.6) for liberal arts majors.

If it develops into high myopia of more than 600 degrees, the risk of related complications will also increase. Don't think that high myopia is far away from your children. According to data from the National Health Commission, in 2020, nearly 10% of myopic students in my country were highly myopic, and even the high myopia rate of 6-year-old children in kindergartens reached 1.5%.

Complications associated with high myopia include:

- Retinal detachment: The axial length of the eye becomes significantly longer in highly myopic eyes, and the retina in the fundus area is stretched, making it easy for the retina and choroid to detach from each other, which can cause serious vision impairment and even blindness if not treated in time.

- Macular degeneration: The macula is the area on the retina where the most photoreceptor cells are located. Myopic patients have increased pressure in the macula, which increases the risk of macular degeneration. Macular degeneration can lead to decreased central vision and seriously affect daily life.

-Others: including choroidal atrophy, vitreous opacity, etc. These lesions will have a significant impact on vision.

Secondly, the impact on the country and society.

The high rate of myopia among our children and adolescents directly affects the quality of our country's population. Moreover, myopia also brings a heavy socioeconomic burden. As parents, actively managing your children's eye health and actively preventing and controlling myopia is actually a contribution to the country from everyone's perspective.

If you find this article helpful, you are welcome to share it with more parents. While helping them, you are also helping us. Thank you.

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About Dr. Jingcai: The creators of Dr. Jingcai's popular science content all have a professional background in ophthalmology, a master's degree or above, and are former ophthalmologists. For some popular science content with a higher degree of professionalism, we will also invite working ophthalmologists and optometry experts to review and check it, striving to be responsible for the accuracy of the content and avoid misleading readers.