Do hard/GP lenses help retard progression of myopia?

I wore hard and gas permeable lenses for a number of years; during that time, my prescription for my myopia changed, but not a lot.  By my late 30's, my prescription was approx. -5.00.  Now I am at a -8.5, even though it's 20 years later.  I switched to soft lenses in my 40's, and it seems like my prescription has increased much more rapidly after this.  A person I met awhile back said her doctor changed her back to gas perm lenses to halt deterioration of her nearsightedness.

I'd really appreciate your view on this.  Thank you.

[Michael J Kutryb, MD]

In my opinion, there is no proven method to stop the true progression of myopia by wearing RGP contacts.  Now, people can develop increased amounts of what I call pseudomyopia by reading excessively and wearing overminused glasses or contacts.  In this situation, the person does so much near work that the eyes get "stuck" in that focusing position creating an artificial increase the amount of nearsighted.  It can be treated with resting the eyes and using only the bare minimum amount of myopia correction in the glasses or contacts.  The key here from your standpoint is to take lots of breaks from near work and look across the room and relax the focusing muscles.  Also it is of vital importance to make sure that your contacts or glasses are not overminused.  A cycloplegic refraction is a good way to help with that.  Now you may get other opinions from some optometrist about the RGP but if you think about it, it the contacts really prevented progression, all the millions and millions of myopes would be in RGP contacts as soon as they got the least bit nearsighted.  It's not that simple and it doesn't work that way.

MJK MD