Greenlane Eye Clinic recently held its second Eyes on Collaboration seminar focusing on paediatric eye care and enhancing collaboration between community optometrists and the hospital eyecare team.
The evening started with a remote presentation by Dr Samantha Simkin about the additional support services paediatric patients can benefit from, including the guidelines for Enable New Zealand funding. She emphasised this is a limited resource that relies on practitioners ensuring that claims meet the guidelines. Dr Simkin included details about the standard and high-level subsidies and the process to claim under genuine and exceptional circumstances. She also highlighted the support services provided by Blind Low Vision Education Network New Zealand (BLENNZ), Blind Low Vision New Zealand, Parents of Vision Impaired New Zealand and Kāpō Māori Aotearoa.
A discussion of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) screening by Dr Annika Quinn, a University of Auckland paediatric ophthalmology fellow, highlighted the risk factors for developing ROP (low birthweight, young gestational age, high unregulated oxygen at birth or fluctuations in oxygen and poor postnatal growth) and detailed how retinopathy is graded and the current treatment paradigms. Dr Quinn described the follow-up of screened children and outlined a range of recent research studies evaluating the use of anti-VEGF agents in the treatment of ROP.
