You have an opportunity to move more children patients into prescription and safety eyewear and contact lenses, according to The Vision Council VisionWatch Parent for Child report. The 2,932 parents surveyed reported an aggregate total of 4,961 children under the age of 18 living at home. Approximately 19.6 percent of those children regularly wear Rx eyeglasses while 5.1 percent wear Rx contact lenses (mostly older children over the age of 14), indicating that about one-fourth of all children wear some type of prescription eyewear. Other forms of vision correction are rarely used by children under the age of 18. Less than two percent regularly use protective eyewear or sports goggles and/or plano sunglasses. The majority of children under the age of 18 (75 percent) do not use any form of vision correction.
Among the children who do use vision correction there are some factors that influence wearing habits and product use. For instance, older children were more likely than younger children to wear just about all types of eyewear, especially prescription contact lenses. Also, children who have had their eyes examined in the past year were more likely than other children to wear some type of eyewear, especially prescription eyeglasses. Finally, children who are covered by some type of insurance were also more likely to wear more than one form of vision correction (i.e. eyeglasses and protective eyewear).
There are significant opportunities to move children into contact lenses in the average practice. There is a nice study done by Dr. Jeff Waline (CLIP Study, AAO Conference, Dec 2006) that answers the concern that younger children might take more chair time if you fit them in contact lenses. His study gave the answer that children eight to 12 years of age take about the same amount of chair time as children 13 to 17 years of age. So, start today offering contact lenses to younger people.
What about compliance? There is a nice study done by Soni et al (CLAO J, 1995 Apr; 21(2):86-92), that shows children 11 to 13 years of age fit with soft daily-wear contact lenses are better than adults when it comes to correctly identifying care regimens, understanding lens disinfection and having confidence in the ability to care for their contact lenses.
What’s our action plan for today? Make sure you are offering contact lenses to all of your patients including children. Review your internal systems to make sure there is no unintentional limit on who gets offered contact lenses and who does not. Set a goal for the number of new fits as a percentage of the number of children you see aged eight to 17. See if you can increase that number between now and the end of the year. Start today.
