David Berntsen from the University of Houston and colleagues conducted a cohort study and concluded that after discontinuing wearing multifocal soft contact lenses in adolescents, there is no rebound worsening of myopia symptoms. The BLINK2 trials involved 235 adolescents (59 percent female) aged 11–17 (median 15) years. All of them had previously participated in the BLINK randomized clinical trials, during which they were randomly assigned to single-focus or multifocal contact lenses for three years. In the present study, all of them wore strong (+2.50 diopters) multifocal lenses for two years, followed by single-focus lenses for a year. The dynamics of the disease were monitored by the axial length of the eyeball and spherical equivalent refractive error. The results are published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
At baseline in BLINK2, the mean axial length was 25.9 (SD 0.9) millimeters and the spherical equivalent refractive error was -3.40 (SD 1.40) diopters. After switching from multifocal to single focal lenses, axial length increased by an average of 0.03 (95 percent confidence interval 0.01 to 0.05) millimeters over one year, regardless of BLINK group (p = 0.81). Myopia progression over the same period was -0.17 (95 percent confidence interval -0.22 to -0.12) diopters, also regardless of group in the baseline trials (p = 0.57). Such progression is within the expected level for the participants’ age and is not indicative of rebound myopia. Thus, multifocal lenses can be used from childhood until the elongation of the eyeball and the progression of myopia cease, the authors of the study conclude.