Predicting of myopia progression in school children.

Myopia in 214 school children has been followed from one to nine years. The children have been divided in groups according to the age of onset of myopia and the amount of final myopia at the age of 15 or 16 has been recorded. If myopia started before puberty (at the age of 10 or younger) 70% of the children ended up with myopia of -3.0 to -5.75 D, only 12.5% remained under -3.0 D, and 17.5% had myopia -6.0 D or more. If myopia began at the ages of 11-15, 66.7% remained under -3.0 D, 32.2% reached -3.0 to -5.75 D, and only 1.1% of the children had myopia of -6.0 D or more. Of all the 214 children, 95.8% had myopia less than -6.0 D at the age of 15-16 years. However, the individual variation is very wide, and it is difficult to predict the final amount of myopia in school years in an individual case.