Promising red-light myopia treatment for children is raising safety concerns among experts
The benefits of a red-light laser treatment for myopia may come at the risk of causing other kinds of long-term damage, according to a recent paper.
Myopia, or near-sightedness, is on the rise: Nearly half of the world’s population will be nearsighted by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. The condition is increasingly common among children in particular, which ophthalmologists attribute to a combination of less time spent outdoors and more time spent with iPads and iPhones.
Glasses or contact lenses, as well as procedures such as Lasik surgery, help correct the blurred vision associated with myopia, which is caused by the eye growing too long. But they do not treat the condition itself, which is associated with a number of pathologies later in life, including retinal detachment and glaucoma. And so recent studies on low-level red light (LLRL) therapy — a treatment done through devices that deliver red light directly into the eye which has been used in China in the past few years — have generated a lot of excitement.
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