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
