With autumn well and truly here, the country’s sports fields have been taken over by football, which, as we know, comes with a relatively high risk of head injury (equestrians suffer the highest incidence of concussion at 130/100,000 participants, followed by Australian Rules Football (80/100,000) and all codes of rugby (50/100,000).
Our feature delves into the value of vision therapy to assist in the rehabilitation of concussion patients, presenting the case of a young player in Western Australia who suffered a contrecoup injury two years ago. One year later, he commenced treatment with behavioural optometrist Liz Wason and after six months, he regained enough focus to push himself through the pages of a lightweight novel. Concussion was a major topic of interest at Optometry NSW/ACT’s annual Super Sunday conference. Our review of the conference includes key messages on concussion presented by Sydney ophthalmologist Dr. Clare Fraser.
It’s sad but understandable that vision impaired people enter residential aged care facilities an average of three years earlier than fully sighted people.
Often, due to misconceptions, these people, their family members and staff at the facilities they live in assume that vision loss is inevitable with age and that little can be done to halt the decline. As their sight deteriorates and co-morbidities creep in, their worlds become smaller.
It’s sad but understandable that vision impaired people enter residential aged care facilities an average of three years earlier than fully sighted people
Yet as we know, the landscape of eye health has changed over the past 10 years. New sight-saving treatments are available and for those with significant vision loss there is an increasing array of low vision aids and technologies to enhance quality of life and independence.
For this issue of mivision we spoke to ophthalmologist Dr. Jim Runciman, optometrists Peter Hewett and Tim Duffy as well as low vision expert Tim O’Connell about the barriers to providing eye care in residential aged care facilities and why it’s so important to find solutions.
We have three diverse CPD articles to keep you busy this month – the first by optometrist Nicola Peaper on digitally surfaced, optimised single vision lenses, the second by optometrist David Stephensen on the continually expanding galaxy of soft contact lenses and the third by Dr. Jagjit Singh Gilhotra on diabetic eye disease and its effective management.
In the lead up to Macular Degeneration Awareness Week, 21 –27 May, ophthalmologist Professor Mark Gillies and Chu Luan Nguyen review findings from the Fight Retinal Blindness! Project, which presents observational data on the real world effectiveness and safety of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor treatment.
This issue we also provide an overview of key presentations from the biennial International Society of Ocular Oncology meeting and on a lighter note, we review the first-ever Silmo Sydney.
This issue also includes a feature on frame and lens packages, a fashion profile on Humphreys Eyewear and the latest international eye fashion from MIDO.
Having worked with mivision as senior writer for six years, this is my first issue as editor and I’m thrilled to have been given the opportunity. I thank Alan Saks for his contribution as editor over the past three months. After moving from New Zealand and settling in Australia, Alan has decided there is plenty of exploring to be done and will divide his time between contributing to mivision as a writer and travelling the country.
I look forward to hearing from you, our readers, about the topics you’d like to see covered in future issues.
