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News
Glasgow Caledonian University - Prize Winners 2008
SCO sponsors the best Dispensing Student (Zibaor Azam) and the best Optometry Student (Carole Whyte) prize every year. Ian Jarvis (SCO Chair) presented the prizes at the ceremony in July 2008.
Scottish Glaucoma Symposium 2008
Please click here for information on the 8th Scottish Glaucoma Symposium being held in Edinburgh on Friday 20th June 2008.
Scottish Optometric Conference 2007
The first SOC was held on 2nd December 2007 in the Radisson Hotel, Glasgow. This was run by Optometry Scotland and the Scottish Committee of Optometrists and had a tightly packed, interesting programme addressing the GOS (Scotland) contract. The key note speaker at the conference was Shona Robison, Minister for Public Health and she announced some exciting new support and funding for Optometrists in Scotland.
Please click here to read the speech in full.
Please click here to read the SCO and OS article in Optometry Today
Glaucoma Screening Paper
The immediate past chair of the SCO, optometrist Stephen McPherson is an author on the paper into glaucoma screening. It is now published and freely available. There is a huge amount of data in this work with a major literature search being a substantial part of the work. All the new techniques for glaucoma evaluation are considered.
Please click here to read the article in full.
Update Course for Optometrists (RCPSG)
This course is being run on Monday 12th November and costs £120. Please click the links for the poster, flyer and booking form relating to this course.
A proposal from the HES glaucoma service
There is a proposal from the HES glaucoma service to discharge all ocular hypertensives currently followed up at the hospital. They are currently seen under the 'Primary Care Clinic' as the Glaucoma consultants feel it is poor use of busy clinic time to see these patients within a glaucoma clinic. They would be discharged to community optometry with guidelines as to action required if certain parameters are exceeded. There are currently three glaucoma trained 'glaucoma optometrists' in Grampian and they would support and assist their colleagues as necessary to help make the process work. The basic care in community optometry would be done under the new GOS arrangements. The Glaucoma optometrist care level is a level 2 service and would be funded by NHS Grampian.
A proposal on how this may occur has been tabled to the AOC by glaucoma specialist Consultant Augusto Azuara-Blanco in conjunction with the Grampian glaucoma optometrists Stephen McPherson, David Corry and Ian Rough. This proposal is as follows;
Proposed referral criteria from Community Optometrists (C.O.) to Glaucoma Optometrists (G.O.) for patients with Ocular Hypertension (OHT), glaucoma suspects and glaucoma;
1. Patients with OHT (normal discs and fields).
IOP should be measured by applanation tonometry:
- If IOP < 26 mmHg, follow-up by community optometrist
- If IOP > 26 mmHg, referral to the Glaucoma Optometrist (G.O.) for central corneal thickness (CCT) measurement and possible treatment.
- If IOP 26-29 and CCT > 555 µm patients will be returned and followed-up by the C.O.
- If OHT patients require treatment, they will be followed by the G.O.
- If IOP > 30 mmHg, referral to the G.O. for follow-up and treatment
2. Patients with abnormal discs and normal IOP (< 22 mmHg), and normal fields:
Refer to G.O. if any of the following criteria
- Unequivocal pathological cupping at the optic nerve head: thinning of superior or inferior neuro-retinal rim, rim notch, vertical enlargement of the cup, localised absence of rim in a sector of the optic disc
- Disc haemorrhage
- > 0.7 cup-to-disc ratio in a normal-sized disc (diameter of 1.5 – 2.0 mm)
3. Patients with abnormal repeatable visual field defects, normal IOP (<22 mmHg) and normal discs: refer to G.O. if the visual fields are consistent with glaucoma (and confirmed in repeated exam)
It is notable that pressure on the eye clinic along with the new GOS examination have resulted in an entirely different approach being taken by the redesign team and ophthalmology to that we may have expected in the past.