February 23, 2022
MONTREAL — In late 2021, Essilor announced that it would begin rolling out its myopia management offerings, including Stellest spectacle lenses and other practitioner resources, in Canada. Now, the company is officially expanding its distribution of Stellest lenses and is launching a suite of myopia management tools and resources to ensure eye care professionals in Canada can provide life-changing care to children with myopia.
“As a world leader in vision care, it is our responsibility to play a leading role in the fight against myopia with cutting-edge innovation and resources to help eye care professionals provide the highest quality of care and impact the lives of many young children,” explained Christophe Perreault, President of Essilor Canada. “We are very proud to bring this full range of myopia management solutions to Canada, making it the first country in North America to launch this vision care system.”
“The research is clear: myopia is an epidemic affecting the lives of millions of children around the world. By 2050, half of the world’s population will be myopic — and a significant percentage will have high myopia1,” said Dr. Millicent Knight, Senior Vice President, Customer Development Group at EssilorLuxottica. “Considering that 80 percent of what a child learns is processed through their eyes2, it is critical that we [eye care providers] detect and manage myopia as early as possible to have a lifelong effect on patients’ education and quality of life. With Essilor Stellest lenses, Canadian eye care professionals now have a complete portfolio of solutions to create a lasting and positive impact.”
Essilor Stellest lenses are equipped with technologies that work in tandem to correct vision and slow the progression of myopia. A single vision zone in the lens ensures good visual acuity and wearer comfort to correct myopia. Proprietary H.A.L.T.3 technology, which consists of a constellation of 1,021 invisible4 lenslets spread over 11 rings, creates a volume of signal that slows down the elongation of the eye to control the progression of myopia. Essilor Stellest lenses are comfortable to wear, and children adapt very quickly: 90% of children in the study were fully adapted within three days, and 100% were adapted within one week.5
Creating a complete vision care system, Essilor’s Stellest lenses are complemented by a suite of advanced equipment from Axis Médical, such as the Myopia Expert 700 and the Essibox Myopia Care. The Myopia Expert 700 will help eye care professionals build a compelling myopia management journey, from onset detection to monitoring. The Essibox Myopia Care is intuitive and offers a convenient workflow from anamnesis to recommendation and handover.
“Embracing the clinical mindset of myopia management is the direction all of our practices need to be headed,” said Dr. Shalu Pal, who leads a practice in Ontario offering a wide range of services, including a specialty in myopia management. “We are fortunate in Canada to have so many options, but the Essilor Stellest lens is a major innovation in our myopia management offering. It is such an easy tool for patients, parents, staff, and practitioners to move from traditional single vision eyewear correction to a more effective myopia control solution. The barrier to myopia management has truly been removed with this lens offering.”
For more information on Stellest lenses, click here for “A New Perspective on Myopia.”
References
1 Brien A. Holden, et al, (2016). “Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050”. Ophthalmology, 123(5); p 1036-1042
2 Eyeglasses for Global Development: Bridging the Visual Divide; World Economic Forum, Social Entrepreneurs, EYElliance; June 2016*
3 Highly Aspherical Lenslet Target
4 Aesthetic finish.
5 Two-year prospective, controlled, randomized, double-masked clinical trial results on 54 myopic children wearing Stellest lenses compared to 50 myopic children wearing single vision lenses. Results based on 32 children who declared wearing Stellest lenses at least 12 hours per day every day. Bao, J. et al. (2021). One-year myopia control efficacy of spectacle lenses with aspherical lenslets. Br. J. Ophthalmol. doi:10.1136/bjophthalmol-2020-318367
