Low-Vision Conference in KL

Feb 24, 2011

By Sharon Siddique

MDS President

in Kuala Lumpur

As I found on arrival at the 10th International Conference on Low-Vision, this is a biannual conference attended primarily by optometrists specializing in low vision – and there are hundreds of them.  The primary organizer is the ISLRR (International Society for Low-Vision Research and Rehabilitation). Country hosts were the Malaysian Association for the Blind and The Tun Hussein Onn National Hospital. The theme this year is Vision Rehabilitation – Towards Better Living.

It was really a packed programme! Each day was full of concurrent plenary sessions, workshops, and symposiums.  Not to mention a hall full of exhibitors, and over 80 poster displays over five days. Hard to take it all in!  And very frustrating that I was often left to choose between two or three presentations that were running simultaneously.

I’ll try to give you a flavour of what I found most useful from the perspective of a patient with macular degeneration.

•       Wow! So many countries have very well-developed national programmes to support low-vision training, rehabilitation, and research.  These run in hospitals, universities, and health research institutes.   There were practitioners from Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Australia, UK, India, USA, Spain, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Sweden, Ghana, Sudan, France, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, Belgium, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, China, Italy…. I’m sure I have left out some countries, but you get the idea!

•       Similarly, the topics of research represented so many areas of interest to us requiring low-vision training, counseling, and equipment.  Some topics which I found most informative were:

o   Depression & Vision Impairment
o   Accessing Low Vision Rehabilitation
o   Efficiency of Low-Vision Devices
o   Quality of Life & Functional Vision
o   Paediatric Vision Rehabilitation
o   Impact of Loss of Central Vision
o   Training & Rehabilitation Models
o   MD & Coping with Vision Loss
o   Vision Field Assessments
o   Enhancement of Reading Performance
o   Vision & the Brain
o   Use of Distance & Near Vision Aids
o   Vision Impairment & Daily Living
o   The Mind and Vision

There were dozens of presentations under all these topics and more.  If you want to keep track of what optometrists are thinking and doing, I would suggest you watch this space:  ISLRR. The next conference will be in Melbourne in 2014.  Some of you might like to plan on attending.