Source: Thailand Medical News Jan 20, 2020 4 years, 10 months, 1 day, 7 hours, 45 minutes ago
The most common vision problem in the world:
myopia or short/near sightedness, which causes damage to the
eye and even blindness, just got easier to assess.
New research at Flinders University in Australia has identified a new method to measure how it affects the
eye, a new article in PLOS ONE reveals.
The research was based on testing of 70 volunteers, with the Flinders
ophthalmology and
medical device research institute experts taking a novel approach with
optical coherence tomography (
OCT), a device already available in most optometric and all ophthalmic practices.
Dr. Stewart Lake, an eye specialists from Flinders University told
Thailand Medical News via a phone interview, "Our research uses the
OCT and finds irregularities at this scale that correlate with the size of the
eye, and therefore the degree of
myopia. This may help monitor, measure, and explore the effects of
myopia and how it leads to vision loss."
Dr Lake added that further development could make the system suitable for use in regular clinical practice.
Past research elsewhere with MRI scanning has demonstrated large scale irregularities in the eyeball in highly
myopic eyes.
Optical coherence tomography or
OCT can sample the shape of the
eye on a much smaller scale than MRI. The
OCT testing will be far cheaper, is more readily available and repeatable as a test, researchers say in the article.
Short or near-sightedness (
myopia) is for many an inconvenience requiring glasses or contact lens to correct. However, globally it is an epidemic and a major cause of vision loss and sometimes blindness.
Short sightedness (
myopia) is defined practically by the strength of lens required to correct eyesight. It was already known
myopia relates very strongly to the size/length of the
eyeball.
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Worldwide estimates forecast up to 5 billion people will have
myopia and 1 billion people could suffer with high
myopia by 2050, placing a significant burden on health systems to manage and prevent
myopia-related ocular complications and vision loss.
This major seven-fold increase, between 2000 and 2050, would make
myopia the leading cause of permanent blindness worldwide (source: Holden et al 'Global Myopia Trends 2000-2050').
Typically, high
myopia increases the risk of pathological ocular changes such as cataract, glaucoma, retinal detachment and myopic macular degeneration, all of which cause irreversible vision loss
Reference: Stewart Lake et al. The correlation between optical coherence tomography retinal shape irregularity and axial length, PLOS ONE (2019). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227207
