Dementia Researcher Webinars – Start on Monday 30th March – Register Today

As we celebrate our 2nd Anniversary we are pleased to confirm that we have added a new feature to our service, in the form of Early Career Dementia Researcher webinars. 

These short ‘midday’ lectures will feature early career researchers talking about their work, and careers. The aim being to share the science, encourage collaborations and support spread and adoption of the learning produced from their work. If you would like to discuss and share your work through a Dementia Researcher Webinar, drop us a line to dementiaresearcher@nihr.ac.uk. If you can’t make the webinar don’t worry, we will be sharing them later through the website.

What’s coming up?

Webinar #1 ‘What happens to your eyes as you get older?’ (Part 1) Monday 30th March at 12 noon

In the first of a two part special, Dr Marianne Coleman a Research Orthoptist at the University of Surrey. Explains ‘Older people are more likely to have difficulty with their eyesight, including their ability to use their eyes together as a pair. This affects ability to judge distances, increasing risk of falling. Early in my NHS career I saw and treated many older people for these kinds of problems, yet hardly any of them had dementia. In the UK you cannot access an orthoptist without a referral. So where were all these people with dementia? What is happening to their eyesight and depth perception after they get diagnosed, as dementia progresses? This question inspired my research. In part one of this two part webinar series, Marianne will explain what happens to your eyes as you get older, and how to look after them.

Webinar #2 ‘What’s dementia got to do with my eyesight?’ (Part 2) Tuesday 31st March at 12noon

People living with dementia can experience unique difficulties when trying to cope with problems with their eyesight, and are at greater risk of treatable sight loss. such as cataract (cloudy lens inside the eye) and out of date spectacles. Anecdotally, people living with dementia can experience problems with judging distances, which can increase their risk of trips and falls. This can occur as part of dementia because the eyes and the brain must work together closely to produce our view of the world.

Problems with judging distances are described as being common in dementia, but actually there’s little research exploring how people living with dementia see, and whether this changes as dementia progresses. Should every person living with dementia have a sight test when they get diagnosed and every year after? What changes in eyesight should eyecare professionals be on the look out for? What are some dementia-friendly ways of testing eyesight? In part two of this webinar series, Marianne will present her research, funded by Fight for Sight and the Royal Society of Medicine, to try and address some of these questions.