July 24, 2021 - Eye Conditions
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
prescribe, eyes, child, optometrist, lens, dilated, visual, developmental, paralyzed, moderate amount, therapy, adjunct, exercises, fairly significant, farsightedness, doctor, plasticity, mom, maximum, question
Hey folks, it’s Dr. Sam and I received a question from a concerned mom today. She took her child to an optometrist, he dilated her eyes and he wants to prescribe a fairly significant moderate amount of farsightedness in each eye one eye stronger than the other. The child is not having any difficulties seeing whatsoever. So the mom wants my advice. Well, first of all, let me say that in an eye exam, where the doctor is putting drops in the eyes, and dilating the eyes, after the eyes are dilated, the eye muscles are paralyzed. So to try to prescribe lenses, after the eye muscles are paralyzed, is going to create an artificial situation where the doctor is going to measure the maximum amount. And he’s going to prescribe that. Now the negative thing about that is, is that when a child wears that, it actually stunts the visual development growth. And it’s very distorting because it’s an artificially way of prescribing the maximum. And you have to take into account the symptoms as well. If there are no symptoms, then I would be very hesitant to prescribe anything at all. You know, in my training, I had some amazing developmental holistic optometrists. And they used to say to me that you want to prescribe the minimum, never the maximum, and you only want to do it part-time, and adjunct with vision therapy exercises. So in this particular case, what I might consider is something called a learning lens, or developmental lens, this would be a lens that’s based on the child’s focusing response. While she’s reading. It’s a very dynamic measurement. And it’s usually a very, very low magnification lens. I also like to prescribe the same lenses in each eye, because that’s going to encourage both eyes together. When you prescribe one lens differently than the other, it’s going to set up in a symmetrical pattern where the eyes are going to be stuck in those positions. So remember, a child’s visual system has a lot of plasticities, and the physical eye therapy exercises are fabulous for helping a child learn how to use their two eyes together so that they don’t need the glasses. So I hope that’s helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much for the question. Take care!