In any field, developments are made every day to improve service and optometry is no different.
One man who has kept an eye on these changes down the years making sure his practice is at the cutting edge is Alexander Bain & Murray (ABM) Opticians and Hearing Director Fergus Bain.
Armagh I caught up with Fergus at the ABM Dungannon branch to have a chat about their OCT – Ocular Coherence Tomography- machine which he says he “would not like to be working without”.
OCT is an advanced eye scan; similar to ultrasound it uses light rather than sound waves to illustrate the different layers that make up the back of your eye.
The OCT machine captures both a fundus photograph and a cross-sectional scan of the back of the eye at the same time. Scientific stuff!
Fergus explained that ABM first brought in the scanner back in 2016, and in order to make sure they were getting the most out of it and gaining experience they used it on all of their patients.
“It is nice to have a record of what is going on at the back of someone’s eye,” he said.
This non-invasive, painless, simple and quick scan allows opticians to instantly diagnose a number of common conditions.
Fergus gave us a quick rundown of what to expect when you are booked in for an OCT scan.
Conditions identified through regular OCT screening include: Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Diabetes, Glaucoma and even undiagnosed brain tumours.
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