Contact lenses

(Ken Love/Akron Beacon Journal/MCT) Story Tools E-mail this story | Print With advances in comfort, cleaning, eye doctors have become more willing to dispense lenses to preteens By Cheryl Powell Akron Beacon Journal April 23, 2007 AKRON, Ohio - When Alexis Swartz started playing volleyball and marching in the school band this past fall, she could see that her glasses were causing problems.

"When it was really cold outside," she said, "they would fog up." Advertisement So the 12-year-old seventh-grader from Mogadore, Ohio, did what a growing number of preteens are doing: She traded in her clumsy glasses for contacts.

"I think it's nicer than having glasses, because the contacts don't get in the way or anything," Alexis said.

Gone are the days when near-sighted kids had to wait until their teen years to swap their spectacles for soft Recent studies have shown that children as young as 8 can handle their contacts properly without any increase in complications.

And with modern advances making contacts more comfortable and easier to keep clean, eye experts today are willing to prescribe the lenses for children when they're still in middle school or even elementary school.

"You have to look at the individual, their level of maturity, their level of motivation," said Tom Barra...

Read more...