Two posters are being displayed at the Royal College of Ophthalmologists Congress next week, where we hope they will draw attention to Birdshot.  Nik Koutramanos’s poster was displayed at the ARVO (American Association for Research in Vision Opthalmology) conference in April 2011 and is now also being displayed at the RCO congress.  It tells the story of the detailed  Evaluation of the Birdshot Day 2010.  Nik is a trainee Ophthalmologist who was actively involved in the day and was  responsible for writing and designing the poster in collaboration with Birdshot team members:- Rea Mattocks, Annie Folkard, Claudia Wilson- Barrett (specialist nurse) , Catey Bunce (statistician), Carlos Pavesio (consultant ophthalmologist) , Narciss Okhravi (consultant ophthalmologist).

Here is Nik’s comment about presenting the poster at ARVO.

“Our poster was very popular in ARVO.  More people than I expected stopped and read it.   It was helpful that we were surrounded by dry scientific posters.  Some had nice things to say, some took a photo of it.  People were impressed that we were able to collect so much information from just one day! We had another 3 birdshot posters around us, all of which were scientific/research based. To my amazement, at some point during the day that I was presenting, a small brown bird, which had somehow strangely managed to find its way into this big windowless airconditioned building, flew over many of the posters, in big circles, and went and sat on one of the birdshot posters stands for a few minutes. I thought that was fairly strange and if I was to be a believer in omens, this could only be a good one :)”

A bird’s eye view from the patients perspective shows  Patients at the heart of Medical Education.   The poster was designed by 4th year UCL medical student  Louise Ramskold,  in conjunction with Emily Kirkby, Ruthiran Kugathasan, Nik Koutroumanos, Narciss Okhravi.

All this publicity raises the profile of Birdshot and BUS within the ophthalmological and eye worlds.

We’d like to thank all those involved for their hard work and helping to raise awareness and get publicity for Birdshot amongst professional.