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Surgical options for the treatment of hyperopia

The modern refractive surgeon has a variety of options available to treat patients with hyperopia who wish to be independent of spectacles and contact lenses. Unlike in low myopia where presbyopic patients may have the ability to see well for...

Developing a unified approach to low-vision care

RNIB’s Preeti Singla and Louise Gow introduce the Adult Low Vision Service Quality Framework. For individuals living with visual impairment, access to high-quality low vision services can be life changing. Yet, across the UK, these services remain fragmented, with significant...

The ‘theatre of the mind’: Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Esme’s Umbrella

The founder of Esme’s Umbrella shares her experience with the poorly understood condition Charles Bonnet Syndrome and the creation of the campaign. Many years ago, when I was a young actress, I was in an American play called ‘Butterflies are...

The lived experience of benign essential blepharospasm

Benign essential blepharospasm (BEB) is a rare neurological condition which causes involuntary sustained or intermittent muscular contraction of both eyelids and upper facial muscles which cause closure of eyelids, abnormal facial expressions and distress [1]. The term dystonia is an...

Collaborating across the Caribbean to tackle diabetic retinopathy

The VISION 2020 LINKS Programme has been running since 2004, with a focus on improving the quality and quantity of eye care training in low-income countries [1]. In 2014, the Diabetic Retinopathy Network (DR-NET) was established [2]. This is a...

Cementing a VISION 2020 LINK partnership between Blantyre and Liverpool – building capacity for DR services alongside research

Malawi is a small land-locked country in eastern Africa with a growing population of over 17 million people. About 45% of the population is aged 14 or under; only 5% are aged 60 or over. The gross national income per...

The invisible touch: a VISION 2020 LINK with Indonesia

Indonesia’s population, the world’s fourth largest, is spread across 6,000 inhabited islands. Whilst some areas (e.g. Kalimantan, Papua) are relatively sparsely populated, Java is the world’s most densely populated island, with twice the population of the UK in half the...

Preventing blindness from diabetes: planning a programme of service development and research across Malawi

In sub-Saharan Africa 19.4 million people have diabetes; this is projected to rise to 28.6 million by 2030 [1]. Sight loss from diabetes devastates the lives of working people, affecting the financial stability of the families and communities who depend...

Primary eye health care in low- and middle-income countries

The need for eyecare services in low- and middle-income countries Recent global estimates (2020) suggest that there is more than a three-fold difference in the prevalence of all categories of visual loss (presenting visual acuity <6/12 in the better eye)...

What’s new in wet AMD papers?

Paper presentations on neovascular (‘wet’) age-related macular degeneration (AMD) from the 16th European Society of Retina Specialists Congress, Copenhagen, September 2016, outline recent research directions evaluating the impact of vision loss on key health domains, patient preferences in the process...