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.

New research from Ocular Technology Group and CooperVision is challenging a common approach to addressing presbyopia among eye care professionals. The study findings illustrate how patients fit with MyDay^® daily disposable multifocal contact lenses achieved better binocular visual acuity at all distances and significantly greater binocular summation compared to monovision.

Investigation on the Influence of Presbyopia Correction on Binocular Vision Status (Guillon M, et al) will be shared as a scientific poster during this week’s 2022 American Academy of Optometry annual meeting.*

The prospective, non-dispensing, randomized, crossover, double-masked study enrolled 21 habitual multifocal contact lens wearers, evenly split between emerging, established, and advanced presbyopes. Subjects were dispensed CooperVision MyDay^® multifocal contact lenses with the Binocular Progressive System^™ following the fitting guide and single vision contact lenses using the same material. This was followed by assessments for monocular and binocular through focus visual acuity, horizontal and vertical phorias and fixation disparity, and stereopsis.

Investigators determined that binocular vision status with MyDay^® multifocal was maintained when compared to spectacle correction and offered good visual acuity at distances ranging from 400 cm to 40 cm. In addition, overall through focus binocular summation (mean binocular summation for all distances) was significantly greater with MyDay^® multifocal than the monovision fits (p < 0.001). The interocular blur difference between monocular visual acuities in the dominant and non-dominant eyes with MyDay^® multifocal was significantly lower than across low, medium, and high add spectacle groups.

“This work provides compelling evidence for fitting MyDay^® multifocal contact lenses instead of using a monovision approach across all levels of presbyopia,” said Percy Lazon de la Jara, Director of Research Programs for CooperVision and a paper co-author. “It’s important to recognize that these observations are specific to MyDay^® multifocal. This is the first contact lens to employ the CooperVision^® Binocular Progressive System^™, a three-ADD method that uses different lens designs to optimize vision for every stage of presbyopia.”

MyDay^® multifocal allows the eyes to work in tandem, which gives a simple initial fit and an easy progression as the near requirement increases. Wearers embrace the lens from the start, with 92% of patients satisfied overall on the initial fitting.² That performance helps wearers get back on the go and spend more time on the things that matter most to them—and may give ECPs more time to fit more patients.

This study joins multiple company-led and funded scientific papers and posters that will be presented at the American Academy of Optometry meeting, which takes place from October 26-29 in San Diego, California.

 Click HERE for the full press release.