1200 Special Olympic athletes assembled in Wellington from 26 November to 1 December 2017 to compete in their respective sports at the National Summer Games (NSG). Since 2001, the New Zealand Opening Eyes programme has screened athletes to assess vision problems. Local wholesalers Optimed, OIC and Designs for Vision generously donated equipment and expertise to enable a volunteer team of 22 optometrists, 17 student optometrists, one dispensing optician and two Essilor staffers to screen and support more than 800 athletes at the ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie, Wellington.
Keratoconus is significantly more common in individuals living with Downs Syndrome and can be more complicated to treat and manage. This year also saw the introduction of a specialist team from the University of Auckland, comprising Akilesh Gokul, Samantha Simkin and Joyce Mathan, who using a corneal topographer, auto-refractor and biomicrosope screened all Downs syndrome athletes, detecting keratoconus or sub-clinical keratoconus in 45 athletes. Many athletes with keratoconus presented with asymmetry of disease, having quite advanced progression in one eye and mild or sub-clinical status in the other eye. We are hopeful corneal cross linking will be very helpful for future management of these athletes.
Cataract, pterygium and blepharitis are other conditions seen with high frequency in Special Olympic athletes and this year, another 30 athletes were referred to ophthalmology, their GP or optometry for further investigation.
