April 2022
‘Sankara Nethralaya’s first PhD degree recipient in the area of Low vision care’ Dr. Sarika Gopalakrishnan
Ms. Sarika is a senior optometrist in the low vision care department of Sankara Nethralaya. She helps patient with low vision by providing appropriate devices and enhancement training to improve the quality of vision to make them function independently while performing their day to day activities. She had enrolled her PhD degree with SASTRA University, Thanjavur in the year 2016. She worked under the guidance of Dr. Rajiv Raman, senior Ophthalmologist in Vitreoretinal services of Sankara Nethralaya.
Her PhD work was on virtual reality technology to measure the visual performance of patients with low vision and augmented reality technology for intervention of patients with low vision. She completed her PhD Open viva voce titled ‘Innovative evaluation and intervention of individuals with low vision’ on 8th Mar 2022 in the presence of external examiner Dr. Suraj Senjam from R.P. Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, AIIMS, Delhi. She was officially declared as ‘Doctorate in Philosophy’ by the SASTRA University on the same day. She has many peer reviewed publications from her PhD work.
Newsweek announces Sankara Nethralaya one of the World’s Best Hospitals 2022
Since 1978, Sankara Nethralaya has taken on the challenge of delivering patient-centric eye care consistently throughout our community care facilities. Even through the worst of the pandemic and beyond, Sankara Nethralaya rose to task of treating patients with Covid related complications as well complications which arose because patients were not able access basic eye care in time. We are happy to be acknowledged as one of the World Best Specialized Hospitals 2022 by the Newsweek- Statistica Inc. survey for the third consecutive year.
We thank our consultants, staff and paramedical staff for their continual dedication to the vision of this institution and making this international recognition possible.
Dr. Krishna Kumar S named one of the “Top 10 authors with the most publications in retinoblastoma research.”
Dr. Krishna Kumar S, Deputy Director of Research, Head of Ocular Pathology Department is named as one of the “Top 10 authors with the most publications in retinoblastoma research” in the article “Publication Trends of Research on Retinoblastoma During 2001–2021: A 20-Year Bibliometric Analysis”
The article appears in the Journal: Frontiers in Medicine, Ophthalmology.
20th Dr E Vaithilingam Memorial scientific session
20th Dr E Vaithilingam Memorial scientific session was held between March 22-26,2022 in memory of ESO’s late principal Dr E Vaithilingam. The session was organised as a five day virtual event with nine speakers from all over the world putting forward their ideas. Prof. Kovin Naidu , Dr. Vijaya K Gothwal, Dr. Kristine Dalton, Dr. Vandana Rajaram, Professor James S W Wolffsohn, Dr Lisa Keay, Dr. Uma Maheshwari K, Dr. Sajeesh Kumar and Professor Michael Webster took part in the session and enlightened about various fields of optometry like Public health, Neuroscience, Sports Optometry, Digital eye strain, Physchophysics, PROMSs and Optometry Informatics. Speakers from the University of Waterloo, University of New South Wales, University of Tennessee, Aston University, Univ. of Kwazulu-Natal, Ferris State University and University of Nevada apart from the LVPEI and SASTRA were part of the conference.
The session saw two panel discussions on the topic “Independent optometric practice” and “My PhD journey” on March 24th and March 25th respectively. Ms Savitha B, Mr Kunal Shah, Ms Vijayalakshmi B and Mr Premal Soni, all eminent independent practitioners were the panelists for the session on Independant optometric practice which was moderated by Ms Lakshmi Shinde, CEO of Optometry Council of India. Six young, enthusiastic and high spirited panelists who had obtained their doctorate recently – Dr. Deepmala Mazumder, Dr. Pradipta Bhattacharya, Dr. Prema Chande, Dr. Rekha Srinivasan, Dr. Sarika Gopalakrishnan, Dr. Sumeer Singh were invited to be the panelists for the second panel discussion on “PhD journey” and was moderated by Dr Krishna Kumar, freelance optometrist and the first to get PhD in Optometry from India. Both panel discussions were well received by the audience. Five workshops on various fields of optometry like Retina diagnostics, Glaucoma diagnostics, Corneal diagnostics, Basic school vision screening and Log Mar chart construction were organised for participants where interpretation of common diagnostic reports were covered.
A total of 158 responses from 39 college of optometry was received for free paper session and posters, from which a total of 30 oral presentations, 76 posters and 14 clinician to researcher presentation were selected for the main event. Judges from National and International universities were invited to evaluate and provide valuable feedback for the session. The following participants bagged the prizes
- Best Oral presentation-Regular- Dr Shrikant R Bharatwaj, LVPEI
- Best Oral presentation-Student- Ms Evneet Kaur, Elite School of Optometry
- Best Case report/Case series- Ms Madhumathi S. Optometrist, Sankara Nethralaya
- Best Poster-Student- Ms Aparna Hareendranathan, Sankara college of Optometry
- Best Poster-Regular-Mr Ronit Dutta, Sankara Nethralaya and Mr Sabyasachi Goswami, L V Prasad Eye Institute
Speakers
Panel Discussions
Workshops
