The World Council of Optometry (WCO) and CooperVision are continuing to work together to shift the profession away from the concept of correcting refractive error to their recommended standard of care for myopia management.
They recently shared the results of a survey on the uptake of myopia management among global eyecare professionals at the 2022 American Academy of Optometry annual meeting in San Diego.
Building on the WCO global resolution which hopes to advance myopia management as the standard of care, WCO and CooperVision presented a poster, Moving the Profession to Embrace Myopia Management, at the conference. The poster explores the changing attitudes of optometrists worldwide in adopting myopia management in their practices.
According to the WCO, in past decades, the increasing prevalence of myopia has been seen as a growing public health epidemic and there has been significant research delving into myopia showing that it can lead to vision threatening conditions. The WCO acknowledges that clinically useful, evidence-based interventions to help delay the onset, and slow the progression, of myopia are becoming increasingly available.
It is for these reasons that WCO and CooperVision have worked to shift the profession away from the concept of simply correcting refractive error to understanding the elements of their recommended Standard of Care for Myopia Management by Optometrists (2021).
The standard of care is based upon the three pillars of mitigation, management, and measurement.
As part of a virtual event earlier this year, Myopia Management: Putting it Into Practice, attended by 1,245 individuals representing 95 countries, WCO conducted pre- and post-event surveys aimed at evaluating the impact of the educational content of the program on clinical practice.
Among 375 respondents to the survey:
- 83% of the pre-event survey group responded that they ‘strongly agree’ and 13% ‘somewhat agree’ that myopia management should be the standard of care
- These increased to 87% ‘strongly agree’ and 9% ‘somewhat agree’ in the post-event survey
- 89.5% in the post-event survey reported that they would approach myopia management in children differently
- 156 eyecare professionals indicated the need for further education on myopia management
Dr Sandra Block, WCO president-elect, said the survey results are encouraging.
“The results of the survey showed that global eyecare professionals feel that learning more about myopia management is important to better care for their patients,” she said.
“We believe the optometry sector should be mindful to create accessible, equitable, evidence-based resources that reflect the growth of knowledge in best practices for the management of progressive myopia in children.”
Block said the WCO myopia website is an excellent place to start the myopia management journey.
The WCO said its partnership with CooperVision shares the clinical information grounded and rooted in science that eyecare professionals need to best serve their myopic patients.
Resources include virtual presentations, published articles and a website with multi-lingual myopia management resources that may have not previously been widely accessible or actively addressed in certain sectors or countries.
“The goal is for optometrists across the globe to embrace myopia management as the Standard of Care and to make it an integral part of their practices,” it said.
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