From Screening to Care: Delayed Clinical Follow-up After Childhood Myopia Identification and the Design of a Prospective Intervention Study.

Authors

Wei Pan, Xiaofan Xu, Peixuan Li, Xiyan Zhang, Jie Yang, Zhikuan Yang, Weizhong Lan

Published in

Ophthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (Optometrists). Jul 14, 2026. Epub Jul 14, 2026.

Abstract

This study was a pilot investigation on delays in seeking clinical care after myopia screening and describes the design of a prospective cohort study to test whether additional intervention can shorten the delay in seeking eye care.
In the pilot study, parents who brought their children to the myopia clinic were surveyed regarding their knowledge, attitudes and behaviours toward myopia. Comparisons between first-time myopia visits (FTMV) and non-first-time myopia visits (NFTMV) were made using the Chi-squared test. The prospective study will involve Grades 1-3 students from four primary schools. Each will be randomly assigned to one of four groups: (1) self-examination visual acuity app; (2) myopia-education videos; (3) both interventions or (4) control. Visual acuity, non-cycloplegic auto-refraction and questionnaires will be collected at baseline and 6-month visit.
In the pilot study, 496 valid questionnaires were included (173 FTMV; 323 NFTMV). In both groups, 74.6% recognised that myopia can lead to blindness (p = 0.99). In the FTMV and NFTMV groups, 95.4% and 97.8% believed that myopia can be prevented and controlled (p = 0.13), 92.5% and 94.1% identified short reading distance as a risk factor (p = 0.48) and 97.7% and 98.8% recognised poor indoor lighting as a risk factor (p = 0.37), respectively. Among FTMV parents, 41.0% reported waiting >12 months before seeking clinical care. In the prospective study, a total of 2400 subjects are anticipated. The primary outcome is the time to myopia-related clinical visit after screening, using survival analysis. Parents' knowledge, attitudes and behaviours toward myopia at the beginning and the end of the study will also be assessed.
Delays in children's first myopia-related clinic visit appear to be common among parents in China, based on preliminary findings from hospital-based survey samples. Further systematic evaluation of large-scale myopia screening and health education initiatives is warranted to enhance their real-world effectiveness.

PMID:
42446806
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.