Myopic reducing contact lenses

[Anoth]

Hi. My daughter who is 14 has very bad short sightedness which is progressively getting worse each time we visit the opticians. We have been offered a trial of new myopic reducing contact lenses and wanted to see if anyone else had experience of these and any success stories of anyone whose vision has not deteriorated since wearing them!
Tried to google reviews but it's such a new product only been around a few years it's hard to find any reviews.
Many thanks!

My DD (who is 10) had a trial of these but couldn't reliably get through a school day without knocking them out of an eye! It might be ok for an older child, though. We were also out off by the fact that the quoted success rate was only about 50%. In the end, DD got the equivalent myopia-controlling glasses, which have had a slightly higher success rate than the contact lenses. She's had them for about 8 months so far and her vision has stabilised during that time (whereas it was getting worse every 6 months). They're really expensive, though - about £300 a pair from Boots!

DD had them for nighttime wear only between age 12-16 to try and stop her prescription increasing as she went through her growth spurts. They worked really well and she found them pretty easy to get on with - now aged 19 and no increase at all in prescription since she was around 13 so they’ve definitely done their job!

You’ve slightly misunderstood that stats.
90% of children get a reduction in myopic progression of 50% on average. So they become 50% less myopic than they would have been without them.
the specs are slightly less effective.

Station11 I was going on the stats given to me by the optometrist, so obviously she misunderstood! And the information on the Boots website (where we got them from) is pretty sketchy, so I'm not surprised. They say the glasses "slow down myopia progression by 67% on average", which is not helpful without any idea what percentage of children see a halt/slowing down and how that 67% is distributed. The lenses we tried are less effective than the glasses (59% reduction Vs 67% for the glasses) but I'm not sure it's a statistically significant difference. But DD has such a strong family history of severe myopia that we were willing to give anything a go!

What is the product called? My DC has been using a similar myopia control contact lenses and they have really worked and slowed down their myopia progression.

My question is how do they know that it slowed down?

How do they know how much it would have changed by without them?

My eyes are still getting worse and I’m pushing 50.

DD’s lenses were called Ortho-K, they worked by moulding the shape of her eyes back to ‘normal’ vision each night

I’ve worn standard RGP contact lenses since I was 12/13, around two decades now. They completely halted my prescription change. RGP lenses aren’t very much used any more as they take ages to get used to, but it’s definitely not a new thing to have lenses that slow or halt prescription change.

Opticians know how prescriptions typically change so they can tell if it’s working. People generally become less long sighted / more short sighted in their teens. I was long sighted as a kid and the timing of starting the RGP lenses was intended to capture the moment at which my prescription was weakest.

My 10 year old is a few weeks in to the daily contact lenses. He found getting them in and out difficult to start with but since he cracked it he's been wearing them all day every day. Too early to know whether they will work, but the optician had a machine that predicts myopia progression and according to that he's likely to end up severely myopic so it seems worth a try. I suspect the overnight lenses would have a better chance of success but he wasn't keen on those (and won't wear his glasses) so we'll see how things go in the next few months... at least he can see during the day now!

My DS had these from age 8-13 as he had a new prescription every 6 months for the 4 years he wore glasses before this. They did the job and he had very little change in prescription for about 5 years. His astigmatism got to a point where he couldn’t have those lenses anymore and he’s now needed 2 very changes in the 2 years since, albeit very slight, so I would say they did a good job while he had them.

Ds16 has been wearing the daily ones for about 6 months now. Too soon to know if there's been any effect really.

Originally we were going to go with the overnight ones - but we had one very helpful optician who talked us through the pros and cons and we changed to dailies.

The main problem with the nightwear ones is you need to wear them religiously and if you forget to put them in one night before school you're screwed - because the next day your vision won't be corrected but also won't be quite back to your full prescription as it takes a day or so, so you can't just sling your glasses on.

I don't trust either myself or ds enough to ensure they're in every night without fail so dailies it is!

My dc have the glasses version. Seems to be working as their eyesight has not changed in the 1.5 years that they have had them.

I had them (night-time ones) from around age 10-15 or 16. Only had a slight change during that time, in terms of short-sightedness. I had to stop since I developed slight astigmatism. I did have a slight increase with them both during and after, but most of my myopia predates them.

My 14-yr-old has been wearing the overnight, Ortho-K lenses for the past five months. It took a couple of weeks for the lenses to make enough of a difference to mean no prescription lenses were needed for the following day but once they were up to strength, they've been brilliant. DC is thrilled to not have to wear lenses during school (eyes dried out) or for sport and is looking forward to being able to swim in the sea whilst also being able to see. With glasses prescriptions, five months in and DC could tell their eyes had worsened but so far, that's not happened. The £250 cost for the Ortho-K is far from cheap but I end up spending £150+ every six months for new glasses anyway, plus £35 a month for daily disposable lenses. The £40 it costs per month makes it a bit cheaper than glasses plus daily contacts but with the added bonus of hopefully slowing the sight deterioration.

I know this is an old thread but it's a specialist subject so have been searching for relevant threads rather than starting a new one...

Dd 12 is short sighted and has astigmatism. She's been wearing the myopia glasses lenses for a few years and they've definitely slowed down the deterioration.

However she now wants to wear contact lenses and has been wearing normal torric soft contact lenses for a week with no problems taking them out or in.

But...if we want to keep slowing the deterioration then she would need something like MiSight contact lenses. But as her astigmatism is 1.25 I don't think she can wear those?

She's adamant she won't go back to wearing glasses most of the time now (she's been quite self conscious about being the only one of her friends wearing glasses....). I'm worried her eyesight will get worse again if she wears normal contacts.

Has anyone found a solution to this at all?

She can try ortho-k which are the overnight lenses.

Thanks Station. Did think about these but as another poster said, I think dd would forget then be back to wearing glasses the next day. Fine for school but not great for sports.

Anti-data here!
DS and his friend have both had fairly high script glasses since early primary, with 6 month recalls for new scripts.
Friend went for the special glasses. DS decided against it. BOTH have seen a halt in the deterioration of the lenses needed. DS1 is currently wearing the same lenses as June 2023. This has NEVER happened before.

I think we were told that the overnight lenses corrected astigmatism... my ds want keen on those so although he has a slight astigmatism we've started with the daily disposables. We haven't been back to see if his prescription has changed but our opticians had a machine that predicted how his sight might deteriorate over time so I'll be interested to see if that graph has changed at all...

My son first got them two years ago aged 8! He loves them, they are very easy to put in and out, he managed on his own. His eye site is very bad but it has slowed down since wearing then. My son wears them for 13hours a day 6 days a week! You can’t swim in them but it’s made all other sport easier as he’s not messing with glasses.

Thanks all. In case helps below is the info we’ve had from dd’s optician:

Misight lenses not an option as her astigmatism is too high.

Soft contact lenses are an option to correct her sight but won’t slow down the deterioration

So for now it’s contact lenses at school/sports/out with friends and glasses when at home. It’s a compromise.

Confess we didn’t realise how much wearing glasses was effecting dd - she refuses to have her pic taken, hides behind her hands in photos.
Obvs it shouldn’t matter but it clearly matters to her so we can’t just dismiss it.

Incidentally the optician said Ortho K don’t operate in the same way as Misight in terms of slowing down deterioration.
The corrective glasses lenses dd has had for a few years have been fantastic for that, as others have said.

Hi all. I know this is an old post but as it's specialist thought it best to keep the info in one place.
DS is 9 next month and we've just found out his sight has deteriorated 0.75 in the last 6 months so he's - 1 in both eyes. Myopia control ortho-K contact lenses have been suggested which we are keen to try.
Both myself and my husband are seriously short sighted and I have suffered a retinal detachment in the past, so DS is ripe for being very short sighted.
Just wondering if anyone has any advice/points of interest on this?
We're leaning towards him trying the sleep in contact lenses that mould the front of the eye.
Tia

following with interest - my son is 8.5 and has just been diagnosed with -1.5/2, and we were also recommended these. How easy is it for an 8 year old to do - the contact lenses I mean?

We have decided against the contact lenses and are going with the myopia management lenses in glasses. We decided the contact lenses would be unpleasant to sleep in.

DS wanted contact lenses & the optometrist advised these. However, I wanted to see if DS would wear contact lenses ongoing as they were quite expensive. He gave up after about 6 months of sporadic use.