Myopia

Symptoms include blurred vision at a distance, but sharp vision at close range. This disorder is more common in boys than in girls. It usually appears from the age of ten.

Causes of myopia include an abnormality, sometimes inherited but more often acquired, of the refraction of the eye. It is characterised by an eye that is “too long” for its power. As a result, the image of a distant object is formed in front of the observer’s retina, creating a blurred projection.

20% of the population is affected by myopia.

Nowadays there is the availability of increasingly thinner lenses, and myopia can be corrected by wearing glasses or contact lenses with concave (divergent) lenses.