Peripheral Refraction and Eye Lengths in Myopic Children in the Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids (BLINK) Study.

Purpose: Provide a detailed assessment of peripheral refractive error and peripheral eye length in myopic children.

Methods: Subjects were 294 children aged 7 to 11 years with -0.75 to -5.00 diopter (D) of myopia by cycloplegic autorefraction. Peripheral refraction and eye length were measured at ±20° and ±30° horizontally and vertically, with peripheral refraction also measured at ±40° horizontally.

Results: Relative peripheral refraction became more hyperopic in the horizontal meridian and more myopic in the vertical meridian with increasing field angle. Peripheral eye length became shorter in both meridians with increasing field angle, more so horizontally than vertically with correlations between refraction and eye length ranging from -0.40 to -0.57 (all < 0.001). Greater foveal myopia was related to more peripheral hyperopia (or less peripheral myopia), shorter peripheral eye lengths, and a consistent average asymmetry between meridians.

Conclusions: Peripheral refractive errors in children do not appear to exert strong local control of peripheral eye length given that their correlation is consistently negative and the degree of meridional asymmetry is similar across the range of refractive errors. The BLINK study will provide longitudinal data to determine whether peripheral myopia and additional peripheral myopic defocus from multifocal contact lenses affect the progression of myopia in children.

Translational Relevance: Local retinal control of ocular growth has been demonstrated numerous times in animal experimental myopia models but has not been explored in detail in human myopia development. These BLINK baseline results suggest that children's native peripheral optical signals may not be a strong stimulus for local growth responses.