astigmatism in a five year old

Hi group,

My five year old girl was checked by an optometrist today and found to
have astigmatism :

OD -0.75 180
OS -0.50 180

We asked if she must wear glasses, since my daughter is very active
and might
hurt herself or break a pair every other day. The optometrist said her
astigmatism is not too severve, and if we want her not to wear glasses
it is not very likely that it would hurt her eyesight by doing that,
just that we should come back every six month to have a check up and
make sure nothing is getting worse.

I would appreciate if some experts or parents in this group could
share their knowledge / experience. What is the best for the long term
eyesight for my girl ? To wear eye glasses now, or not to wear eye
glasses and try and see if the eyes would correct the refractive
errors themselves ?

 

I'm a parent, and I wouldn't put glasses on my kid for that mild of a
correction until the kid was older and actively wanted them. If your kid
is typical and lets the glasses get all cruddy, they probably would make
her vision worse rather than better.


Although there is a lot of arguing on this group about the effect of
glasses on kid's vision, I don't think anybody would argue about
astigmatism. I can't see why there would be any effect of the glasses on
the progression of the astigmatism.


I also wouldn't take my kid in every six months. Once a year should be enough.

 

That is a pretty minimal astigmatic error and I never prescribe that
amount to a five year old. Annual exams (ie every 12 months) are
fine- every 6 months is somewhat of an overkill in this situation.

The astigmatism may increase later on, may not. Time will tell.
But at this point I certainly wouldn't be overly concerned or worried
about your daughters vision.

frank

 

Thank you Dan and Frank for responding to my question. Appreciated. I
also try to put off the idea of having eyeglasses made for my
daughter. But since she has only been checked by one optometrist, it
might be a good idea to get a second opinion. My other question is :
does it make any difference if the exam is done by a MD opthalmologist
or an optometrist ? Do they all get training in how to check out young
children or I should go to some kind of a specialist ?

 

In routine, uncomplicated cases, any optometrist should be able to
do a good job on a child and there's no need to seek out any secondary
level care. It might be different if there was any significant ocular
or visual problems such as strabismus (eyes misaligned) where surgical
intervention might be indicated for instance.

frank

 

My daughter's case I think is pretty straight forward. We brought her
in for an eye exam because we discovered that sometimes she tilt her
head a little bit when she sit down and watch tv. The optometrist said
it was because of the astigmatism that she has. And she does not has
lazy eye or other problem.

 

Good point Mike but I assume that the optometrist would have uncovered
a strabismic posture (vertical deviation) during the exam.

frank