Next to allergies, myopia is the other highly disliked affliction that plagues our family. And today, another child has been diagnosed with shortsightedness. That makes it 6 out of 7. Sigh.
I would like to share our journey and perhaps help those who are facing this affliction have another option to consider when deciding what to do with their child’s myopia.
When our first child was diagnosed with high myopia (if I remember correctly, by the time we “caught” it he was already at 400+ degrees!) and had his degree going up aggressively fast, we were recommended to administer atropine drops. The rather famous doctor we saw did not bother to explain much to us about how it works except that THAT was THE treatment. Since at that point in time we didn’t know anything about it except that it works to dilate the pupils and can lead to early cataracts (?!), we, of course we declined the treatment. With hindsight, it was a pity. Sorry, David. That is the price you pay for being our firstborn.
Every six months his degree would shoot up 100-150 and sometimes 200! It was scary so we succumbed to using the atropine drops but this time with another doctor. He recommended a less aggressive treatment plan, using homatropine instead. To be administered nightly. We would later on find out that homatropine is a touch and go treatment. It may or may not work but you get all the side effects! His degree progression did slow down but only slightly. Interestingly, for our other boy, the same doctor recommended atropine 1% but 3x/week. Our second child had to stop administering the eye drops because she developed an allergy to it!
Since we were often at the optician’s making new glasses we made friends with them and found out from the young chap there (who has since left) that in his 10 years at the shop, the only success stories he had seen of slowing down myopia, or maintaining the degree of myopia successfully, were those on 1% atropine drops. And it had to be done nightly. Doing it on alternate nights or in any other configuration (eg. drops on 2 nights with a rest of 3 nights, etc) resulted in all the side effects and little benefits. Nightly 1% atropine drops is guaranteed to work our new eye doctor claims. (Yes, this is our 3rd eye doctor!) There is now experimentation in reducing the dosage to 0.1% but it is like using homatropine drops – touch and go.
With that advice in mind, subsequent children who had myopia that progressed aggressively were immediately started on atropine 1% drops. It has worked for us so far.
One child even had her degree lowered slightly after being on the treatment programme for the past 3 years. Whew! Yes, her eyes are sensitive to light. And she may have an increased risk of getting cataracts earlier but having myopia of over 1000 degrees is no walk in the park either. I am not sure if her degrees can be maintained forever but at least it isn’t going up by 100 degrees every 6 months!
The 2 boys who were either given homatropine nightly or atropine 1% 3x/week have myopia of over 1000 degrees in each eye! This makes all outdoor sports very inconvenient and uncomfortable, especially water sports. It is indeed a huge liability. If the first doctor had explained the treatment clearer to us, maybe they wouldn’t be in this state. But we would never know because there are those who go on the treatment programme and still had their myopia creep up, albeit at a slower pace. It is NOT a magic treatment.
The drops are then stopped at 13 or when the child has finished most of his growth spurt – coz that’s when most children’s degrees shoot up scarily again. Besides administering the eye drops nightly, the child also needs progressive lenses and transition glasses or clip-on sunglasses. As the pupils are “frozen”, the eyes are unable to focus on near work, hence the need for progressive lenses. And because the pupils are constantly dilated and unable to constrict in response to brightness, transitions glasses (glasses that darken upon exposure to sunlight) or clip on sunglasses are required.
So now when I am asked about the atropine treatment programme, I am all for it! The other option I know of requires the child to wear contact lenses at night while sleeping. This is not an option for us so doing the atropine drops nightly is the treatment plan for now.
I hope this helps someone put here who is worried about putting their child on this treatment plan. It is not perfect or ideal but neither is living with high myopia.