WCO and CooperVision Advance Changing Approach to Myopia Management

Friday, October 28 2022 | 11 h 50 min | News

The World Council of Optometry (WCO) and CooperVision, shared the results of a survey on the uptake of myopia management among global eye care professionals with attendees at the 2022 American Academy of Optometry annual meeting in San Diego.

Building on the WCO global resolution which hopes to advance myopia management as the standard of care, WCO and CooperVision presented a poster, Moving the Profession to Embrace Myopia Management (Block, Hendicott, Lumb, Cooper, Bockhahn-Tylecote) today at the conference.

In past decades, the increasing prevalence of myopia has been seen as a growing public health epidemic. There has been significant research delving into myopia as a disease showing that it can lead to vision threatening conditions.Clinically useful, evidence-based interventions to help delay the onset of and slow the progression of myopia are becoming increasingly available.For these reasons, WCO and CooperVision have worked to shift the profession away from the concept of simply correcting refractive error to understanding the elements of our recommended Standard of Care for Myopia Management by Optometrists (2021).  The standard of care is based upon the three pillars of mitigation, management, and measurement.

The poster explores the changing attitudes of optometrists worldwide in adopting myopia management in their practices.  As part of a virtual event, “Myopia Management: Putting it Into Practice” attended by 1,245 individuals representing 95 countries earlier this year, WCO conducted pre- and post-event surveys aimed at evaluating the impact of the educational content of the program on clinical practice. Questions included:

• Are you currently a practicing eye care professional?
• How long have you been practicing?
• Do you believe myopia management should be a standard of care for all myopic children?
• Do you currently offer myopia management in your practice?  If not, do you plan on adding it to your practice going forward?
• Did the information in the webinar change your approach?

Among 375 respondents to the survey:

• 83% of the pre-survey group responded that they “strongly agree” and 13% “somewhat agree that myopia management should be the standard of care
• On the post-survey, these increased to 87% “strongly agree” and 9% “somewhat agree”
• 89.5% in the post-survey reported that they would approach myopia management in children differently
• 156 eye care professionals indicated the need for further education on myopia management

“We are encouraged by the results of the survey which showed that global eye care professionals feel that learning more about myopia management is important to better care for their patients,” said Sandra Block, OD, World Council of Optometry President-elect.  “We believe the optometry sector should be mindful to create accessible, equitable, evidence-based resources that reflect the growth of knowledge in best practices for the management of progressive myopia in children.”

Click HERE for the full press release.