Myopia Progression in Children and Adolescents Before and After Use of a Novel Extended Depth of Focus Daily Disposable Soft Contact Lens

Myopia has been increasing in prevalence and severity throughout the world over the last 30 years. Increasing levels of myopia are associated with increased frequencies and severity of various ocular pathologies, including cataracts, glaucoma, retinal detachments and other retinal pathologies and myopic maculopathy. Slowing myopia progression at a young age before the eye reaches excessive axial length may help to reduce the future risks of these ocular pathologies.

Conventional spectacles and contact lenses are prescribed correct myopia by moving the central focus of the eye for distance viewing from in front of the retina to on the retina centrally, or at the fovea. To varying degrees, these lenses allow the light to focus behind the retina, at varying peripheral retinal locations. These findings have led to efforts to design spectacle and contact lenses which correct peripheral hyperopic defocus, to reduce myopia progression.

The consensus theory for how both multifocal contact lenses and orthokeratology can control myopia progression is that they each can reduce, eliminate, or reverse relative peripheral hyperopic defocus. Existing published studies on the use of multifocal contact lenses to control myopia in humans have utilized lenses with the distance correction in the center with peripheral plus power to correct the peripheral blur. Until recently, there have been no daily disposable multifocal lenses in the US market with distance center designs.

The NaturalVue contact lens from Visioneering Technologies, Inc. is the first daily disposable distance center multifocal in the US. It has a novel extended depth of focus design where the distance correction is in the center of the optical zone, surrounded by a zone characterized by having a seamless, rapid transition from the distance power to a highly plus power at the edge of the optical zone.

This study will analyze the myopia progression of patients in the investigator's practice while wearing their habitual visual corrections for periods up to two years prior to being switched to NaturalVue contact lenses. They will then be followed for up to two years after beginning use of this novel lens design and the differences in their myopia progression after versus before this novel lens will be analyzed. Axial lengths will be measured with the IOLMaster after switching to NaturalVue, at six-month intervals and will be compared to axial lengths which have been collected with habitual corrections.