But it's important to realise that laser surgery may not necessarily improve your vision to the same degree as wearing corrective lenses. There's also a small risk of potentially serious complications that could threaten your vision, such as the cornea becoming too thin or infected. You shouldn't have any sort of laser eye surgery if you're under the age of This is because your vision may still be developing at this stage.
Even if you're over 21, laser eye surgery should only be carried out if your glasses or contact lens prescription hasn't changed significantly over the last 2 years or more. Find out more about diagnosing short-sightedness.
Laser surgery isn't usually available on the NHS because other treatments, such as glasses or contact lenses, are considered to be equally, if not more, effective. Prices can vary depending on where you live, the individual clinic, and the type of equipment used during the procedure. Lens implant surgery is a relatively new type of surgery for short-sightedness.
It involves implanting an artificial lens into your eye through a small cut in your cornea. They can be helpful in improving the vision of people with very severe short-sightedness or those who have difficulty wearing glasses or contact lenses.
Both types of implant are usually inserted under a local anaesthetic and you'll normally be able to return home the same day. Each eye will usually be treated on separate occasions. Phakic lens implants may achieve better results than lens replacements in terms of improving vision on a long-term basis.
But the technique carries a higher risk of complications, such as cataracts. Overall, most people will experience a significant improvement in their vision. A lens replacement may be more suitable for older adults with damage to their eyes or an eye condition other than short-sightedness, such as cataracts or glaucoma. Also, as both techniques are relatively new, there's little information about whether they're safe or effective in the long term.
Like all medical procedures, surgery to place artificial lens implants in the eyes carries a risk of complications. Posterior capsule opacification PCO is one of the most common complications of lens implant surgery. This is where part of the artificial lens becomes thickened and cloudy.
PCO usually occurs a few months or years after having surgery. Treatment for PCO can involve having laser surgery to remove the thickened part of the lens. You should talk to your doctor or surgeon about each procedure so you're fully aware of any risks involved.
The younger they are when they start becoming short-sighted, generally the faster their vision deteriorates and the more severe it is in adulthood. But it may be slowed by treatments involving eye drops of a medication called atropine, or special contact lenses. Research has shown that atropine eye drops can slow the progression of short-sightedness, but it can cause side effects at high strengths such as difficulty reading and sensitivity to bright light. Orthokeratology and bifocal contact lenses may also slow down short-sight progression in children, but possibly not as much as the eye drops, and they carry small risks.
Page last reviewed: 30 July Next review due: 30 July Corrective lenses Glasses Short-sightedness can usually be corrected using glasses made specifically to your prescription. The thickness and weight of the lenses you need will depend on how short-sighted you are. This usually occurs because the eyes grow longer than that of someone that can see well at distance.
Approximately 1 in every 6 British adults is myopic Typically, the onset of short-sightedness occurs in school age around the 6 to 14 years of age and progresses over time during the teenage years when the body grows rapidly and the eyes exert more hours of near work. It usually stabilises in the early years of adulthood.
The exact causes why people become short sighted are not fully clear yet but our understanding of the cause of myopia has improved significantly over past years with hundreds of scientific studies. It has been suggested that both genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development of short-sightedness.
The rates of myopia prevalence vary amongst different ethnic and geographic populations, with East Asian populations having the highest incidence. Some studies have also demonstrated that the risk of a child being myopic increases with the number of myopic parents. This means that the chances of developing myopia when one of the parents is short-sighted doubles compared to those children whose none of the parents are myopic; and increases by almost eight times when both parents are myopic.
While it is very likely that genetic factors have an effect on myopia development, the increase in prevalence over the years has suggested that environmental factors such as the amount of near work and outdoors activities must also play a role. When we look at objects close up, our eyes need to adjust and focus the near object whose image should be formed at the back of the eye retina in order for us to see it clearly.
Sometimes our eyes do not quite meet the focus demand required and so we generate a blurred image behind the retina. When this happens, the clever reaction of the body is to try to get that image focused by elongating the eye so the image can no longer be blurry.
However, this happens to be counterproductive generating a progression on the degree of short-sightedness. Instead, the light rays focus just in front of the retina, resulting in distant objects appearing blurred.
It's not clear exactly why this happens, but it often runs in families and has been linked to focusing on nearby objects, such as books and computers, for long periods during childhood.
Ensuring your child regularly spends time playing outside may help to reduce their risk of becoming short-sighted. Read more about the causes of short-sightedness.
Read more about treating short-sightedness. Some adults with severe short-sightedness and young children with untreated short-sightedness are more likely to develop other eye problems. Page last reviewed: 30 July Next review due: 30 July It's thought to affect up to 1 in 3 people in the UK and is becoming more common.
Signs that your child may be short-sighted can include: needing to sit near the front of the class at school because they find it difficult to read the whiteboard sitting close to the TV complaining of headaches or tired eyes regularly rubbing their eyes Getting your eyes tested If you think you or your child may be short-sighted, you should book an eye test at a local opticians.
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