Pediatric Eye Exams

We are proud to announce that we opened our new children’s eye care center in  August 2024.

At least 25% of school-age children suffer from visual problems that can affect their ability to learn in school, participate in sports, and observe the world around them.

Children often don’t know how they should see or feel, and so may not report a visual problem or eye health issue. Vision problems are associated with poor school performance, delayed development, and trouble in social settings. The sooner eye problems are identified and treated, the better!

Routine school vision screenings can miss a variety of visual and eye health problems. In fact, they fail to detect up to 75% of children with visual problems. They are not a substitution for comprehensive eye exams.

Currently, the biggest threat to children’s eyesight and eye health is the myopia epidemic.

Myopia is the refractive error that results when the eye is shaped in a way that causes light to focus in front of the retina instead of on the retina. This causes objects to appear blurry.

As children grow, their eyeballs become larger and longer. If the eyes grow too long, myopia develops.

The development of myopia is related to genetics and environment. If one parent is myopic, it increases the child’s chance of developing myopia by 3x. It doubles to 6x if both parents are myopic.

Children and adults are spending less time outdoors, and this has resulted in an increased incidence of myopia. In fact, myopia has become an epidemic throughout the world.

The higher the myopia (the longer the axial length of the eye), the poorer the vision. We can correct for vision with glasses and contact lenses. However, myopia is not just a visual problem. Having eyeballs that are too long increases the risk for glaucoma, cataracts, myopic degeneration, and retinal detachment, along with other eye health problems.

There are treatment options aimed at slowing down the progression of myopia. We call these “myopia control strategies”. The main ways to control myopia are:

• Orthokeratology contact lenses, otherwise known as corneal refractive therapy (CRT)
• Low concentration atropine eye drops
• Soft dual focus contact lenses (MiSight)
• More time spent outdoors in bright natural light

We can measure a child’s axial length to evaluate the progression of myopia, determine risk of pathology, and evaluate the effectiveness of myopia control treatment.

During your child’s comprehensive eye exam, we will determine his/her refractive error, measure the axial length of the eye, review family history, and perform a full ocular health evaluation. If your child is at risk for myopia progression, we will provide recommendations on the appropriate management strategy.

Vision therapy is a fully customized treatment program aimed at helping patients improve and strengthen their visual system, including eye tracking, convergence, eye-hand coordination, and visual processing. Specifically, it is used to treat amblyopia (“lazy eye”), strabismus (“crossed eyes”), binocular vision disorders (eye teaming and tracking problems), accommodative (focusing) disorders, eye fatigue, double vision, and visual perception and processing disorders. Children with reduced visual skills can have difficulty with reading or reading comprehension, resulting in poor academic performance. Dr Johnson specializes in the diagnosis and management of these issues and can create a treatment plan tailored to each patient’s individual needs.