Future of Myopia Involves Catching It Earlier, Utilizing New Technologies

Brianna Rhue, OD, FAAO, co-founder of West Broward Eyecare, discussed how myopia management is continuing to shift, including new forms of treatment and how providers can ensure sure myopia is treated early.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Can you describe the myopia session that you participated in at SECO?

I opened a session this morning. It started with [Katherine K. Weise, OD, MBA, FAAO; Safal Khanal, OD, PhD, FAAO; Debbie Jones, FCOptom, FAAO, FBCLA], and myself presenting really the science behind myopia management. Then I was able to really steer the crowd into now how to integrate myopia management practice. The science is really there, that's what we were really unpacking with them, and then I was bringing it full circle, and how we can now share it with our patients, and get the patients and the parents to say yes.

What is exciting in the myopia space right now?

The myopia space is blowing up. If you just see industry getting behind it. We got our first FDA-approved treatment in March of 2020, which MiSight was. Then we had the Abiliti lens, which is the ortho-k [orthokeratology] lens that got approved. I was actually the first Abiliti fit in the country. I was actually pregnant with my now 3-year-old. Now we have low dose atropine—we're just wrapping up the study, which is this nexus study I happen to be an investigator for. That's really coming. And then we have spectacles in Canada. We have the Abiliti soft lens in Canada. You've got otho-k, all these things. It's really coming full circle in how we are approaching it, why it's important to do it, and now integrating all of that for the patient.

What is the future of myopia?

The future is that every kid is going to get an eye exam very early. I'm talking 3, 4, 5, years old. Really, it should be around 4 years old. The pediatricians need to get involved with this. And if they find something, they shouldn't really refer to a pediatric ophthalmologist. They're busy, they need to be doing surgery, this should be in our wheelhouse. What we should do now is we've got to catch these kids earlier. If a child is 4 or 5 and they're already showing a +0.75 or +0.50, that's already a myope with a minus in front of it. This is where I see things like prophylactic atropine coming in. Every year we can delay the onset of myopia, it all adds up in the back end, where they need less correction with their glasses or contact lenses; they're better surgical candidates for LASIK; really overall less risk as they get older into their 40s, 50s, and 60s. This all needs to get younger, we got to see younger kids. Then now that we have all these things we can do, we can present it for the patients.