As daily life gets busier and busier, especially with the new school year about to begin, Barrhead optometrist Dr. Grant Balen says parents are putting the health of their children’s eyes on the backburner.
“If there are no overt or blatantly obvious problems, you aren’t digging around for the answers and I think that plays a part as well,” he said, adding because children are adaptive to their surroundings and conditions, it is possible if there is a problem with their vision, likely a parent would not know regardless.
“They’ll just adjust to it and not complain because they don’t know any different.”
Dr. Balen said some of the more common problems, of which refractive error issues such as lazy eye (amblyopia), near-or-far-sightedness (myopia), as well as astigmatism being the main issues, are correctable if caught early enough.
“We suggest bringing your child in for their first eye exam between the ages of between six to nine months, because that is when they are becoming more alert and starting to track objects,” he said.
Between the ages of one and five, Balen said, the visual system is developing and there is a competition between the optic nerves in both eyes.
“If one eye is at a disadvantage, then the affected optic nerve won’t be making an equal amount of connections and in healthy vision, you’re hoping for a 50/50 split,” he said, adding if caught on time, treatment for refractive error issues can be as simple as wearing glasses for a short period of time, or patching the affected eye for a similar timeframe.
“Problems like these have to be dealt with before children reach the age of six, because after that, the visual system is not as pliable and the affected eye will likely remain lazy for life.
Conditions that affect the elderly such as diabetes and tumors [retinal blastomas] can also affect children as well.
“It is said that 80 per cent of learning is vision-based in children, so if they are at a disadvantage because of any of these factors, it puts them at a disadvantage to learn and to succeed at school as well,” Balen said.
For patients under 19, he said Alberta Health Care covers one exam per year and he recommended having it done regularly.
“It is best to not assume everything is normal, even if it appears so.”
