Abstract

The review summarises the prevalence of myopia and its time trend in the world, China, Europe and Finland, based on articles published in 2016, 2025 and 2026. Estonian data is from 1876–1988 as since the 1990s the data are incomplete. Globally, the prevalence of myopia has increased in recent decades, reaching epidemic levels in East and Southeast Asia. The prevalence of myopia and its increase in European countries is lower than in Asia, in the Nordic countries the prevalence has remained unchanged and the increase is minimal compared to other regions of the world. The prevalence of myopia in Finland has not increased in recent decades and is not increasing as rapidly as in Asia. The prevalence of myopia in Estonia has been thoroughly studied at different times. Placing the existing Estonian myopia prevalence data in the context of Finnish data allows us to analyse the temporal trend of the prevalence of myopia in the Estonian population. There
is no need to be concerned about epidemic spread of myopia like in Asia, more likely the prevalence trend of myopia in Estonia will resemble Finland and other Nordic countries, where the prevalence has not increased in recent decades.