AKURAT.CO, The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many patterns of life and public health, including for children. The government agreed to issue an online learning policy as a form of breaking the Covid-19 chain in society. The scope of activities of children has also decreased, who previously learned face-to-face and can play outside the home, now have to switch completely to gadgets for activities during this pandemic.
This is sure to make children spend a lot of time in front of the screen (screen time). There is research that suggests that the level of gadget use by Indonesian children during the Covid-19 pandemic has increased by 19.3 percent with an average of 11.6 hours per day.
Increased number screen time can have a bad impact on eye health. One of them is Computer Vision Syndrome, which symptoms include tired eyes, watery eyes, dizziness, and blurred vision. If this is allowed to drag on, children can experience an increase in refraction such as eye minus and cylinder eyes progressively.
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According to a study conducted in China, during 2020, children aged 6-8 years were 3 times more prone to suffer from minus eye compared to previous years. This certainly shows that the Covid – 19 pandemic has greatly affected the eye health of children.
As a result, many parents are starting to care about their children’s eye health. This condition is a challenge for their baby who has experienced refractive errors for a long time and the risk is minus or cylinder increase during the pandemic is very high.
Parents began to look for solutions to the minus eye experienced by their children, but they were confused about where to go. Because what they know, apart from glasses, the solution to refractive errors is surgery or LASIK. Meanwhile, Lasik is not recommended for children under 19 years of age.
In fact, there are methods that can be taken to inhibit and reduce the eyes minus your little one without surgery, namely by using contact lens therapy Orthokeratology (Ortho K). This therapy aims to reshape the patient’s cornea, which was previously irregular, to become naturally rounded again.
“Ortho K therapy can be a solution for eye minus children who continue to increase from year to year. The process is natural, safe, and has FDA Approved. Use of Ortho K contact lenses. (Orthokeratology) very simple, only used when sleeping at night. Then it can be removed in the morning and the children get bright vision without the use of assistive devices such as glasses or conventional contact lenses, “said Andri Agus Syah, OD, FPCO, FAAO as an Optometry Doctor and Ortho K Specialist at the VIO Optical Clinic, Saturday, (10/4), in the City of Harapan Indah, Bekasi, West Java.
Even though it is relatively new in Indonesian society, this method has been used for more than a decade in America. Orthokeratology is proven to be safe and has a high success rate in reducing and inhibiting the minus rate.
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