Hopes for Myopes

Almost one-fourth of the world's people develop myopia; up to 15% of U.S. schoolchildren are afflicted. So far, eye doctors have been at a loss for any means to correct the condition or to arrest its advance. Last week, in a cautious preliminary report, the experts suggested that a corrective may have been found by chance in the wearing of contact lenses.

Myopia results when the eye's lens (just behind the pupil) cannot bring the incoming light rays into focus on the retina at the back of the eyeball but focuses them at a point in front of it. A myopic youngster's glasses have to be changed every year or two (sometimes oftener) because, as he grows, his eyeball lengthens and the out-of-focus effect gets worse. Though this early myopia usually stabilizes when growth ends, it may have become so severe that glasses could not possibly provide 20/20 or even 20/30 vision; some victims end with less than 10% of useful vision, meaning that they are technically and legally blind.

Eye doctors say they have never seen a case of nearsightedness which became less severe after the wearing of eyeglasses, so that the lenses could be made weaker. But after the small, plastic contact lenses that cover only the eye's cornea became available in 1939, some doctors began to see such cases. So far no ophthalmologist (M.D.) has published these findings, though several report them privately. Last week, at a National Contact Lens Congress in Manhattan, an optometrist from Harrisburg, Pa., Dr. Robert J. Morrison, reported on 1,100 myopes, aged seven to 19, whom he had fitted with contact lenses, and which they wore all their waking hours. After a minimum of two years' observation of each case, Dr. Morrison saw none in which the myopia had got worse, several in which it had decreased so that the lenses could be made weaker. Some of the improvement may have been due to pressure, which keeps the cornea from bulging farther. That cannot be the whole story, because pressure disappears when the patient stops wearing the lenses--as one or two have succeeded in doing. What the general explanation may be, Optometrist Morrison would not try to guess.

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