Ophthalmology Research
Dr Peter Scanlon's Diabetic Retinopathy Research:
Members of the Diabetic Retinopathy Research:
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Peter Scanlon
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Lead Researcher
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Rob Johnston
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Lead Researcher
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Quresh Mohamed
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Lead Researcher
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Irene Stratton
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Senior Statistician
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Steve Aldington
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Research Advisor
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Paul Donachie
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Statistician
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Steve Chave
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Informatics Lead
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Mala Rohling
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Research Coordinator
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Abi Hedley
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PA to Dr Scanlon
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The Gloucestershire Ophthalmology Department have been awarded the status of a European Clinical Trial Site Centre of Excellence and the Gloucestershire Diabetic Retinopathy Research Group are involved in the following research projects:
Current Research Projects:
Flurri Project
A Research for Patient Benefit Grant has been awarded to the group in collaboration with researchers from the University of Warwick.
This project, entitled “Understanding factors leading to low uptake of diabetic retinopathy screening in Primary Care”, is a qualitative case study which aims to understand why people do not attend their screening appointment to have their eyes photographed and therefore may be putting themselves at risk of future blindness.
It has been found that those in deprived areas are less likely to attend, but other reasons such as inconvenient timing of the appointment, patient forgetfulness, cultural and language barriers in ethnic groups and even the attitude of the administrative staff booking the appointment have been mentioned.
A range of GP surgeries will be contacted and selected patients from different groups will be interviewed to see if there are ways in which screening uptake rates might be improved and the incidence of preventable vision loss reduced.
Other Research
The group have other research projects pending which include studying the potential benefits of customised screening intervals for certain groups of people with diabetes, and a European-wide clinical study looking at very early prevention of diabetic retinopathy-related neuroretinal degeneration.