Tui explaining OCT results

At Central Vision we are proud to announce the arrival of our Maestro OCT scanning machine!

Technology changes come fast and furious for most businesses these days, and there’s always a fine line between waiting for the next progressive advancement and getting an amazingly useful piece of equipment to add value to that already used in a business.   For us and the people of Wanaka, now is the time to act!

The OCT machine is a device designed to take a three dimensional scan of different parts of the eye, it is based on low-coherence interferometry – but basically can be thought of as an optical ultrasound.  We can now get 3D scans of different parts of the eye, down to details of sub-micrometers.

With this OCT, we have the ability to see through the layers of retina and determine if there is any damage, and if so, what extent of damage there is.  This is vitally important to the early management of macular disease if treatment is indicated, we can see this, and action it right away instead of waiting and watching to see if someones vision worsens.

The other cool thing about this type of scanning is it gives us an insight into what’s happening in the layers under the ones we can see with the naked eye.

Often things look okay on the surface of someone’s macular, but we can’t get that person seeing as well as we’d like with glasses.  Now we can do an OCT on this person and see if there is healthy macular tissue under the surface of what we can see with the microscope.  If we detect something we aren’t happy with, we export the file directly to the ophthalmologists for assessment and action.   It’s pretty amazing how quickly we can get things done for a patient when the doctor can see in real time what he or she is dealing with.

And macular degeneration is not the only thing we find this machine useful for.  The 3D scan of the optic nerve can show us any thinned, damaged areas, and also is becoming part of the standard for monitoring optic nerve head changes over time.  This makes glaucoma co-management with ophthalmologists that much more thorough and consistent.

Now this Maestro OCT is also designed to be used on the front of the eye.   This gives us a lot of brilliant information about corneal thicknesses for keratoconic patients, it allows us to assess trauma more accurately, and it also lets us look at the drainage structures at the front of the eye in a 3D manner and assess risk factors for glaucoma.

For the remainder of 2015, if a patient requests, we will donate a portion of the OCT fee to the Vanuatu Cyclone Pam relief fund.  Having returned from a volunteer medical trip in Vanuatu late last year, the place is dear to Tui’s heart and we know Wanaka people love to get behind helping out our neighbours, so we will support them on Wanaka’s behalf.

Ni-vanuatu children posing outside their home pre-cyclone