A recent study reveals that half of Madrid's children need to wear glasses or contact lenses. This makes Madrid the city where more children need to use some correction system, according to the V Spanish Visual Health Study.
This study, which has been carried out by Ipsos Health for the company Transitions Optical, shows that 88% of parents do not know that overexposure to ultraviolet rays (which come from the sun) can cause vision damage and therefore do not take preventive measures, which in children are more important if we consider that they spend an average of 27 hours a week outdoors, more than adults. In fact, only 6% of children wear glasses that protect from ultraviolet radiation.
It is not that parents do not know the harmful effects of the sun, since 35% (and I would say more), is aware of the risks involved in continued exposure to the sun, however, when talking about the eyes, only a 12% are aware of the danger.
87% of the participants in the study consider it appropriate to start visual checks before the age of 6, although only 17% visited the eye doctor for the first time before the age of 9.
Comments about the study
Transitions Optical, who has subsidized this study, is a company manufacturer of photochromic lenses, which makes it hard for me to believe (even more) the results of the study.
Half of the children in Madrid are many children and, if this were true, the eye health of today's children would be much worse than years ago. This increase in problems is attributed to the harmful effect of ultraviolet rays, of which I do not doubt, however, I remember that in my time as a child we probably spent many more hours outdoors than the children of now and we had fewer problems, because they were Very few who really had to wear glasses.
With regard to the lack of revisions, I am unaware of the functioning of the health system of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, but in Catalonia, for example, at four years of age the first tests are done to assess the vision of children in the routine review carried out in the health center and only when an anomaly is observed, is the child referred to the eye doctor. In this way, very few children go to the eye doctor, but many have already been evaluated.
Come on, I have the feeling (that many of you will surely have had when reading the headline), that Smoke and fear are being sold for parents to carry out prevention by buying sunglasses from their children.
I do not mean by this that they do not need them, since it is true that the sun can be guilty of some ocular alteration. My son, in fact, takes them when it is sunny and is 4 years old, since I am aware that, like the sun, it bothers me, it bothers him. Now, from there to having to wear prescription glasses or contact lenses (half of the children in Madrid) for not wearing sunglasses, it sure goes a long way.
