Darwin Regional Series in partnership with Talking Eyes
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Date: 8/04/2025 (ACST)
Venue: Mantra Pandanas 43 Knuckey Street, Darwin, NT, 0800
Time: Registrations open 6:00pm
Dinner served at 6:20pm – OA update from Optometry Australia CEO Skye Cappuccio
CPD sessions 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Provider: Optometry QLD NT
Contact: Angela Davison, [E] a.davison@optometry.org.au, [P] 0409896349
Non-members wishing to attend should email Angela at a.davison@optometry.org.au
Activity Outline
This Darwin Regional Series event partners with Lien Trinh of Talking Eyes to offer three sessions of CPD, plus dinner and drinks, with Optometry Australia CEO Skye Cappuccio and Director of Optometry Advancement Sarah Davies in attendance.
Session One:
Dr Nishantha Wijesinghe highlights the importance of childhood vision screening and the pilot project currently underway in Darwin, a project supported with funding from a grant from RANZCO.
Session Two:
This session will look at how early diagnosis and referral of anterior segment lesions is crucial for maintaining patients’ vision and quality of life. In primary practice, optometrists can play a key role in distinguishing between benign and malignant lesions. We will discuss the key features that should prompt further investigation.
Session Three:
Lien Trinh and Dr Rajeev Naidu host a panel session on anterior eye cases.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the importance of vision screening in the NT and the work currently being undertaken towards this
- Compare and contrast the signs and symptoms of anterior benign and malignant lesions
- Determine when to refer patients with anterior lesions for further investigation
Max CPD hours awarded: 2Ti
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Dr. Nishantha Wijesinghe is a senior ophthalmology consultant at Royal Darwin Hospital, specialising in paediatric ophthalmology. Since 2008, he has treated most paediatric eye patients in the region. He completed a Paediatric and General Ophthalmology Fellowship at the University of Sydney in 2007 under Prof Frank Billson. Dr. Wijesinghe also serves as the clinic lead for the Top End’s Visiting Optometrist Scheme and works to improve eye health for Indigenous children. Additionally, he serves on RANZCO committees and is an examiner for the RANZCO basic clinical eye exam.
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Professor Constantinos Petsoglou is a cornea specialist at the Sydney Eye Hospital. He is medical director of the New South Wales Tissue Bank and also director of training of the Sydney Eye Hospital training network. He completed an anterior segment fellowship at Moorfields Eye Hospital under Professor John Dart and has interest in numerous fields of cornea disease and eye banking.
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Lien Trinh is the founder of research translation podcast Talking Eyes, a passionate advocate for health equity, and a dedicated optometrist and public health expert based in Darwin. She has extensive experience delivering eye care to communities from Central Australia all the way through to East Arnhem. Lien has led a number of key projects in the Northern Territory: Kids NT, an initiative to provide children in the Northern Territory a pathway towards comprehensive eye care, and EndTrachoma, a national project to support the elimination of trachoma in remote Indigenous communities.
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Dr. Rajeev Naidu is an ophthalmology registrar from Sydney Eye Hospital currently on rotation at the Royal Darwin Hospital. He is an experienced optometrist and a co-founder of Eyes of Hope, a charity focused on the provision of sight for UNSW’s homeless. Dr. Raj has published peer reviewed articles in the areas of myopia control and refractive surgery options for high myopia with Fudan Eye and ENT Hospital and the Key Myopia Research Laboratory of Shanghai. He was the founding president of Young Optometrists NSW/ACT and remains active in teaching across both optometry and medicine.
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