Myopia Clinic Newcastle:

Welcome to our myopia management clinic within Custom Eyecare Optometrist

We provide customised myopia management and treatment options on Darby St, Newcastle.
For information about general eye examinations and other services please visit our Custom Eyecare website.

Why we provide care for myopia

Being short-sighted (or myopic) isn’t fun.  You rely on glasses or contact lenses for everything, everyday.  Without your glasses on, everything in the distance is blurry. You can’t drive or recognise faces without your glasses on. It’s even hard to spot your towel at the beach unless you have your specs on. 

Glasses can look amazing and at the Myopia Clinic Newcastle, within Custom Eyecare on Darby St, we pride ourselves on helping people select the right glasses to ensure you look great in your eyewear and your vision is the best it can be. 

But having to wear glasses all the time is annoying. You always need to think ahead “Have I got my prescription sunglasses if the day turns out super sunny?”. Then “have I got my clear glasses in case I’m out after dark?”, “Do I need my contact lens case in case I stay with friends?” A constant frustration. 

Eye tests are not something you ever loved because every time you went to the optometrist they told you your eyesight had deteriorated and you needed stronger glasses. This cycle continued all throughout your growing years until you reached adulthood.

Then when you have kids and little people just love pulling at your glasses, and putting their sticky fingers all over your spectacle lenses, and now it’s hard to spot your own children at the beach unless you have your specs on. 

Then you child becomes short sighted…

Fast forward to today, your child has now become short sighted.  But it seems different to when you became myopic.  Your child is younger than you were when you first got glasses.  Or maybe they have become short-sighted without anyone else in the family being myopic.  And their prescription keeps increasing very rapidly, with glasses getting stronger every 6-9 months.  If they are reliant on glasses at such a young age, how strong will their prescription get?  How thick will their glasses be?  And, most importantly, will this affect the health of their eyes in the future?

This is a common story we hear everyday at the Myopic Clinic within Newcastle’s premiere optometry practice Custom Eyecare. At the Myopia Clinic Newcastle we are focussed intently on reducing the progression of myopia, known as myopia control.

The myopia epidemic

Myopia isn’t just happening to your child, it’s now an epidemic across the world. The rate of myopia in children everywhere is rising. The current prediction is that 50% of the world’s population will be myopic by 2050¹. Now that is almost 5 billion people! 

Myopia prevention

At the Myopia Clinic Newcastle, we aim to treat the cause of myopia, not just the symptoms.  Myopia is the abnormal elongation of the length of the eye, which creates blur in distance vision.  Giving simple glasses just treats the symptoms of blurred vision, but does not help prevent the eye from elongating, nor protect the future of vision. We know that the higher the level of myopia, the greater the risk of eye diseases like cataract, glaucoma and retinal detachments are later in life.  The goal of Intervening early is to prevent more serious ocular health issues in the future.

At the Myopia Clinic Newcastle, we use new technologies and evidence-based treatments to slow the growth of the eye and hence the myopia progression.  Controlling myopia is the aim of every treatment we recommend in our clinic.

If you or your child is short sighted and you would like to slow the progression, please book an appointment to see one of our optometrists.  Every treatment option is considered and each recommendation is custom made for your child and their lifestyle.

1. Holden BA, Fricke TR, Wilson DA, Jong M, Naidoo KS, Sankaridurg P, Wong TY, Naduvilath TJ, Resnikoff S, Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050, Ophthalmology, May 2016 Volume 123, Issue 5, Pages 1036–1042.