Multi-Focusing Glasses

Fitting glasses for myopia control has some advantages over other forms as they are easy to fit, well tolerated, affordable and minimally invasive. The overall goal of myopia control is to induce peripheral defocus (blur) outside of a person’s central area of clear vision to prevent the eyeball from elongating causing an increase in nearsightedness.

Sceptical control of myopia was originally achieved through the use of Bi-Focal lenses. These lenses had visible segment of near, or reading power at the bottom of the lenses to allow the eyes to relax the amount of accommodation, or focusing they needed to use to see clearly at near tasks. While this helped to reduce a person’s focus at near, it was not shown to be very helpful in producing the peripheral defocus needed to slow myopia and the results were less than stellar.

Progressive Addition Lenses (PAL’s, or Progressive Lenses) were also used to slow myopia, again by relaxing the eyes focus at near to reduce accommodation. While more expensive than bifocals, the rate at which they slowed myopia was also poor.

While spectacle correction for myopia control has currently reduced poorer results, there is finally a new lens on the market that is able to achieve the desired peripheral defocus and has been shown in a recent study in 2019 to help reduce myopic development by an average of 60%.

The Hoya MiyoSmart lenses was introduced in 2020 and utilizes an entirely new concept called DIMS (Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments) to help induce peripheral defocus and stop the eye from elongating. The lens is compromised of a 9mm central zone in which a person’s nearsightedness is fully corrected and multiple, defocus segments evenly surrounding the central zone (extending to the mid-periphery) of the lens to control myopia progression. This provides clear vision and peripheral defocus simultaneously at all viewing distances.

These lenses have been shown to be well tolerated by those who wear them and are an excellent choice for kids 6-18 who do not want to use contact lenses or eyedrops to control progression.