The 2026 Vision Expo kicked off its education on Wednesday with a 4-hour program titled “The Greatest Comprehensive Myopia Management and Treatment Complications Course Ever.” Both 2-hour sessions were moderated by Jack L. Schaeffer, OD, and featured lectures from Shalu Pal, OD; Cheryl Chapman, OD; and Adam J. Peiffer, OD, MS.

Dr. Schaeffer described the program as soup to nuts. “We took the time to go deeply into each [topic],” he explained, “so that when they walked out of the program, anybody who attended from beginning to end could go straight to their practice and develop their own myopia management program.”

Myopia Is a Disease

In 2024, the National Academies of Science reclassified myopia as disease instead of just refractive error to recognize severity of condition. In addition, it is predicted that the prevalence of myopia will reach 50% worldwide by 2050. Because of these statistics, Dr. Schaeffer explained the reasoning behind performing a comprehensive exam on a child. “It’s not just about myopia, it’s not just about their future,” he said, “it’s really about taking a child and making them healthy."

Multiple Treatment Options Available

Dr. Schaeffer noted that practitioners should look at myopia as staging. “You start with glasses, you have atropine, soft contact lenses, and orthokeratology, and you need to decide what each child needs,” he said.

He noted that spectacle and atropine treatments are currently somewhat limited. “Here in America, we’re restricted [in terms of approved spectacle options],” he said.

“Atropine is pretty simple. And, hopefully, we’ll have a drug that’ll be approved soon. Right now, we’re using compounding,” he continued. “But it’s pretty simple to add atropine to any one of the treatment modalities.”

According to Dr. Schaeffer, soft lenses are really simple to do. “We all fit soft contacts,” he said. “There’s absolutely no reason to have a child that you think is going to develop myopia and progress, and not to put them into a lens that specifically treats that disorder.”

However, he noted that orthokeratology is a little more difficult. “Some practices are not going to do orthokeratology. It takes a special type of doctor to do that,” he explains. “Anybody can do it, but you have to know how to deal with the complications.”

It’s a Process

From a practitioner standpoint, it’s important to know what their practice will need to treat their myopia patients. Questions to ask include: How do you bring it into your practice? How do you determine appropriate fees? What kind of equipment do you need? How you train your staff? and What do you say to patients and their caregivers?

As to that last point, Dr. Schaeffer noted that communication about a patients myopia program specifics is a key to success. “You have a new entity…and it is time-intensive. It is especially important to explain to parents ‘here’s why we want to do it and here are the steps we will take.’