Moorfields Eye Hosp annual meeting

[rosemary johnson]

I went to this illustrious event this afternoon.
Anyone else on here there?

There were some fascinating speakers in the latter part of the meeting, about medical/scientific issues.
The lead consultant from A&E spoke about the role of A&E, changes to the organisation of the department, their role and some of the cases that come to them.
She had some very gory slides of some of the emergency cases, urgent cases and less urgent cases who come. Some of the latter can be sorted out quickly by a nurse practitioner; others have to wait for a doctor. One sad case she reported came to MEH A&E reporting trouble with his eyes, they couldn't find anything wrong with the eye and sent him elsewhere for tests, and it transpired he had a brain tumour pressing on the optic nerve - in need of urgent treatment by someone else.

Two people spoke about the research work going on relating to stem cells, and the prospect of using stem cell therapy for treating many conditions.
These are adult stem cells, not the embryo stem cells that cause, eg. George W Bush to ban the whole area.
Typically, the aim is to harvest adult stem cells from the limbus area around the iris, cultivate them in the lab to be more/bigger/stronger and them re-introduce them. Otherwise, they may try to use stem cells from the MEH stem cell tissue bank - and setting this up has been a success itself.
Using donated cells will require the patient to be on immuno-suppressants, as for a transplant, but they think this will be for shorter periods than for a transplant.
One of the questions they are looking into is whether this could be used to treat genetic disorders.
It is early days yet, but already they have the first actual patient, and more lined up.

I wondered if someone from this department might be able and willing to talk to a future KC group meeting (or conference)?

Unfortunately, I missd large chunks of the earlier presentations, due to having to keep being bustled out of the hall as the meeting was not accessible - and none of the MEH people bustling me out the door thought to fill me in on who was talking or what about, let alone a precis of what they'd said so far.
It was disappointing that an Eye Hospital, of all people, couldn't make their meetings accessible to people with vision disabilities - or "wouldn't", because they did suddenly find they could after all, half way through, faced with typical bolshie Person With KC - and equally disappointing that the chairperson tried his best to not-answer a question about policy and commitment on making these events generally accessible by trying to turn the question into a personal issue. Clearly, the answer to the question was "No, we have no commitment"!

After the formal end of the meeting I had a chat with one of the governors who works for the RNIB, including talking about the outpatients appointments "system" or rather lack thereof. Specifically, that for people with short lens wearing time and/or long journeys, by the time we've sat in the waiting area for hours, fretting about what our boss is going to say about us being so long, and getting more and more sore, sticky, etc, we're so far past our tolerance time that the appointment is not of much use anyway.
I hope she's going to take that up. Meanwhile, she says they have a team of "experts" going round reviewing all the clinics in turn, and will, allegedly, get round them all some time. SHe does meanwhile agree there is much wrong - not to mention outdated, outmoded and the like - with the current system.

There is also an open day on 8th October that they were encouraging us all to come to. It sounds like it could be interesting - but I gather from the governance staff that probably would be very accessible either, and I don't know whether I've got any more energy to spend on MEH!

Rosemary

[Sue Ingram]

Hi Rosemay, Very Interesting! Well done for attending and for letting us know something about the meeting. SUE

[rosemary johnson]

thanks Sue! - and good to "talk" to you again.
I do find it gets very tiring (emotionally draining, I mean0 when it is such a struggle to get out to *any* event because of access problems - and yesterday was a struggle.
never mind, there were some interesting things said, and in the last couple of days I've also got the account sup to date, sent in the tax form - and got a new password and got back in here again.
Am also proposing to contact my friendly governor about the odd situation where you can go and collect your new contact lenses from MEH, but can't officially hae a prescription for enw solutions to use with said brand new lenses without taking up everyone's time by getting an appointment to pick up a box and a piece of paper!
Rosemary

[Sue Ingram]

Hi Rosemary, I would like to know what they say about that one - it all gets very frustrating and burocratic, doesn't it. But hey, on the whole, I have generally had excellent service from MEH (other than the wait when you arrive for your appts). Glad to see you are back. Take care and let us know how you get on. SUE