05/05/2026
My latest article for Optometric Management magazine, "The Myopia Toolkit" just published. In it, I argue that all eye care practitioners must manage myopia effectively. The trajectory of progressive myopia all around the world with an alarming level of vision threatening conditions associated with excessive axial elongation cannot be meaningfully altered if we depend only on myopia control specialists. To paraphrase Nike, optometrists must choose to just do something. Now with a spectacle lens finally authorized by the FDA, there is practically no reason for any optometrist or ophthalmologist to decline to offer a treatment for myopia. Doctors who aspire to provide the most efficacious treatment for their individual patient should practice at the level of their competence and refer to colleagues if their patients require specialty care. The late great Brien Holden once argued that by merely controlling myopia in a population by 50%, practically so easy even Earl Smith's rhesus monkeys could do it (at least according to some of my lectures) there may never be -6.00D myopes. With broad use of our ever expanding "Myopia Toolkit" that strikes me as a very reasonable goal.
Thomas Aller, OD, provides in-depth overviews of each myopia management option—pharmacologic therapy, soft contact lenses, orthokeratology, spectacle lenses, and environmental and behavioral interventions—so clinicians can not only provide the right option to each patient, but also address the l...
