Location: Fry 33
Meeting Called by: Pre-Optometry Club
Duration: 1 hour
Guest Speaker: Dr Flom: Low Vision Rehabilitation
Agenda
- Why does Dr Flom do this work? Dr Flom puts it into “mastery and meaning”, where mastery is feeling in the zone, feeling important and solving problems, and meaning corresponds to the satisfaction of having the ability to alleviate suffering of patients.
- Low vision: a vision deficit that impedes performance of everyday tasks thats permanent and not correctable in typical ways (glasses, contacts, surgery, etc)
- Causes of low vision include albinism (missing pigmented layer in the retina), macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, etc
- Prevalence of visual impairment and blindness in US adults over 40: 1.5% of adults are considered visually impaired (< 20/70 visual acuity), 0.5% are legally blind (<20/200 visual acuity), functionally blind is 0.05% which entails mild degrees of visual impairment
- Risk factors of impairment and blindness include age, socio-economic status, gender (among low vision patients, males > females, among older low vision patients, females > males)
- Low vision approach: “We can’t give you vision back but help you use the vision that you have to be as active and independent as you would like”
- Optometric Low Vision Rehabilitation Purpose: help patient with visual impairment to overcome visual disabilities and handicaps by compensating for lost function
- Assessing nature and severity of visual impairment:
- visual acuity testing: for the purpose of assessing a baseline for that person, to classify them for eligibility for something in particular, gives an idea for how string prescriptions need to be , to describe visual capabilities
- ETDRS: adapted eye chart for getting highly systematic measurements, adapted for the early treatment pf diabetic retinopathy study
- Low contrast conditions prevent detection of objects, facial recognition, reading facial/emotional cues, walking and avoiding hazards
- The Low Vision Exam: Preparation, history (medical/ocular, goals), preliminary testing(
Rx verification, SLE and optos eval), refraction (objective and subjective), reading assessment (initial and re-test), device evaluation, rehabilitation plan, ocular health testing, counseling, coordination of care- Options could include magnifiers, using your own phone/technology (seeing AI app)