I mentioned in earlier posts about the effects of nearwork on vision, especially with young people. One of the more dramatic changes I have seen was with a ten year old boy. He was basically 20/20 last year. Over the last 12 months his vision has dropped to about 20/200. He can achieve 20/20 with glasses. Part of this may be genetic. However, the father states his son is constantly doing a lot of hand held video games. Think how close the device is to the boy's eyes and how small the text is. I am confident that among texting, video games and normal computer viewing, the changes in vision I will see among my patients will be very significant.

I recently had a teenage patient who had suffered an eye injury playing soccer. He was not wearing any eyewear protection. The ball hit him in the eye and he immediately noticed blurred vision. He visited the ophthalmologist. There was scarring in the back of the eye (retina). If the scarring were 2mm superior, the patient would have lost most of his central vision in that eye, and nothing would have been able to restore it. The sad part about this patient is that he is still hesitant in wearing protective eyewear due to vanity reasons.