Abstract
Purpose :
Daily “eye exercises” massaging periocular acupuncture pressure points have been part of China’s national vision care policy in schools for around 50 years. However, the effect of eye exercises on myopia progression and eyeglasses wear has not been definitively investigated. This study evaluates the effectiveness of eye exercises on visual acuity and the propensity of ruralchildren’s wear of glasses.
Methods :
Cohortstudy in 252 randomly selected rural schoolswith baseline at September 2012 and with follow up surveys 9 and 21 months after baseline.Outcomes were assessed using propensity-score matching (PSM), multivariate linear regression and logistic regression to adjust for differences between children performing and not performing eye exercises.
Results :
Among 19,934 children randomly selected for screening, 2,374 myopic (spherical equivalent refractive error ≤-0.5 diopters in either eye) children (11.9%, mean age 10.5 [Standard Error 1.08] years, 48.5% boys) had VA in either eye ≤6/12 without glasses correctable to >6/12 with glasses. Among these who completed the 21-month follow up, 1,217 (58.2%) children reported practicing eye exercises on school days and 874 (41.8%) did not. After propensity-score matching, 1,652 (79%) children were matched: 826 (50%) in the Eye Exercises group and 826 (50%) in the No Exercise group. Performing eye exercises was also not associated with children’s change in LogMAR uncorrected visual acuity and wear of glasses using either logistic regression or PSM at 9 or 21 months.
Conclusions :
This study found no evidence for an effect of eye exercises on change in vision or glasses wear.
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.