We are successful for the most part in treating kids with glasses and contact lens. There are some kids who just won t wear their glasses and have anisometropia, where there may be a role for this kind of procedure. Granet said that every ophthalmologist who deals with children has children who just don t want to wear glasses. If they are given the option of being able to have a refractive surgery procedure, they probably would jump at it. I m not sure that that makes it the right thing to do.
Data regarding refractive surgery in children are limited and many questions are left unanswered.
In the youngest age group that would be most affected by amblyopia, surgeons may have to consider sedation. This means the doctor has to center the eye instead of the patient and that raises the level of seriousness of the procedure right off the bat, he said. In addition to the small group of patients who fail wearing glasses or contact lenses and would be helped by refractive surgery, Granet said that children who have had intraocular lens implants for cataract surgery and experience dramatic refraction changes might be helped with laser surgery to balance their prescriptions. However, this procedure may not need to be done until they are older and outside the amblyopic age groups. Children often fail to wear the glasses because of their weight, their inconvenience, poor cosmetic appearance, and optical distortion caused by thick spectacle lenses.