Myopia Management
Myopia Management for Kids in New Albany, OH
If your child’s prescription has gotten stronger every year — or you’re hearing that’s “just how it goes” — you have more options than you think. Myopia management is a clinical approach to slow how fast your child’s nearsightedness progresses, with the goal of protecting their long-term eye health, not just selling them stronger glasses.
The science has changed a lot in the last decade. We now have four well-studied tools that, used the right way, can meaningfully slow myopia progression. Drs. Karres, Keller, and Dennis will help you figure out which one fits your child best.
Schedule a Myopia Management Consult | Or call 614-933-0575
Why myopia control matters more than the prescription
Most parents think of nearsightedness as inconvenient — a stronger prescription every year, foggy glasses, dry contacts, trouble seeing the board. That’s the visible part. The reason myopia management exists is what’s happening underneath.
Myopia is the eye growing too long, front to back. As it grows, the retina at the back of the eye stretches with it. That stretching, over decades, raises the lifetime risk of:
- Retinal detachments and tears — the elongated eye stretches the retina until it tears or detaches.
- Myopic maculopathy — degenerative changes in the central retina that can permanently reduce reading and driving vision.
- Glaucoma — high myopia roughly doubles the lifetime risk.
- Earlier cataracts — myopic eyes tend to develop cataracts a decade or more earlier than average.
These risks scale with how myopic the eye becomes. A child who reaches –6.00 carries dramatically more lifetime risk than one we slow to –3.00. That’s the goal of myopia management — not perfect vision, but a less-myopic eye than the child would otherwise have had.
Myopia Control Options
Low-dose atropine drops
A nightly drop, applied at home before bed. The dilution is much weaker than the drops we use in office (typically 0.025% or 0.05%), so kids generally don’t notice blurriness or light sensitivity. Atropine has the longest research history of any myopia treatment and is often the most affordable option. It can also be combined with one of the contact lens or spectacle approaches below.
Orthokeratology (Ortho-K)
A custom gas-permeable contact lens worn overnight that gently reshapes the cornea while your child sleeps. They wake up, take the lens out, and see clearly through the day with no glasses or contacts. Particularly good for active kids — swimmers, athletes, anyone who finds daytime contacts inconvenient. Multiple studies show it slows axial elongation. Learn more about Ortho-K →
MiSight 1 day soft contact lenses
The first FDA-approved soft contact lens for myopia control in the US, designed for kids 8 to 12 at the start of treatment. Daily disposable, so there’s nothing to clean. The lens has a special concentric ring design that gives clear central vision while sending a peripheral signal to the eye that helps slow growth. A great option for kids who prefer soft contacts to overnight wear and aren’t ready for ortho-k.
Stellest Glasses Lenses
Newer-generation spectacle lenses with hundreds of tiny lenslets across the surface that reshape how light focuses on the retina — in a way that helps slow the eye’s growth. Worn like normal glasses during the day. Stellest (Essilor) and MiYOSMART (Hoya) are the two most studied options, and the published trials show comparable myopia-slowing performance to atropine and contact lens approaches.
The big advantage: kids who aren’t ready for contacts, can’t tolerate atropine, or whose families prefer not to use drops can still get meaningful myopia control through glasses they were going to wear anyway.
Custom-made lenses provide optimal vision and comfort, tailored specifically to your child’s unique eye shape at Central Ohio Vision and Eyecare.
How we decide what’s right for your child
There isn’t one best treatment. There’s the one that fits your child and your family. We look at several things together:
- Age and progression rate. Kids whose myopia is changing fast, or who started myopia very young, are the highest-priority candidates and may benefit from combination therapy (e.g., atropine plus Stellest).
- Lifestyle and activity. Active kids, swimmers, and gymnasts often do well with ortho-k. Kids who are sensitive about wearing contacts may prefer spectacle-based options.
- Compliance. Atropine requires a nightly drop. Ortho-K requires nightly insertion. MiSight requires daily insertion. Stellest just requires wearing the glasses we’d be making anyway.
- What’s been tried. If a child is already in glasses or contacts that aren’t working, we know more about how their eyes respond.
We talk through the trade-offs and pick the approach that’s most likely to work in real life, not just on paper.
What a myopia management consult looks like
A myopia management consult is more than a regular eye exam. We measure:
- Refraction — current prescription and how it’s changed.
- Axial length — the actual front-to-back length of the eye, the most accurate marker of myopia progression. We track this every six months to know whether treatment is working.
- Corneal topography — a detailed map of the front of the eye, especially important if ortho-k is on the table.
- Binocular vision — how the eyes work together, which sometimes contributes to focusing problems that mimic worsening myopia.
We also want to understand your child’s habits — screen time, time spent outside, reading distance, and family history. Time outdoors genuinely matters: the research consistently shows kids who spend more time outside have slower myopia progression. We’ll talk about practical changes alongside clinical treatment.
Why families come to COVE for myopia management
Dr. Keller has been a pediatric eye care specialist for over two decades, is an InfantSEE provider, and has examined thousands of children across Central Ohio. Dr. Karres has a research background in specialty contact lens design — including ortho-k — and presented at international optometry conferences on the topic. Together they handle the full range of cases, from the first-time young myope to the kid who’s already tried two or three approaches without success.
We also don’t rush the consult. Picking a myopia treatment is the start of a multi-year relationship — we want it to be the right one.
Schedule a myopia management consult
If your child’s prescription keeps changing, or you’re tired of accepting that as normal, give us a call. We see patients from New Albany, Gahanna, Westerville, Johnstown, and across Central Ohio.
Schedule a Myopia Management Consult | Call 614-933-0575