First-ever birdshot day - a great success

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust joined forces with the Birdshot Uveitis Society (BUS) to run the first-ever annual birdshot day on 11 September 2010. The day was a great success with a total of 126 people attending, with patients travelling from as far away as Northern Ireland and Scotland to be there.

Birdshot chorioretinopathy is a rare poorly understood often undiagnosed, autoimmune, chronic, bilateral form of posterior uveitis that affects adults of all ages and can lead to blindness if undiagnosed or not aggressively treated. There is emerging evidence that it could affect children as well.  
The day aimed to raise awareness of this rare disease, enable healthcare professionals and patients to learn from each others’ experiences, allow patients to meet one another, provide information on the latest treatments and protocols, and help to identify a cohort of patients for further research and other collaborative projects.

During the morning session, medical professionals from Moorfields Eye Hospital as well as Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital and Pitie-Salpetriere University Hospital, Paris, covered topics such as:  What is birdshot; symptoms, diagnosis and prognosis; who is prone to birdshot and why; tests and monitoring of birdshot current treatments; latest information on birdshot, new trials, and research. 

The afternoon sessions were more patient focused, with Mike Brace CBE, chief executive of VISION 2020 (UK) speaking about how he coped with blindness and Phil Hibbert talking about how he came to set up the Uveitis Information Group, after he was diagnosed with uveitis.

Rea Mattocks, one of the BUS founders said “Many patients who commented on the day, talked about how their sense of isolation has been diminished by being able to meet other patients and professionals who are interested in their medication regimes, their side effects, the holistic approach to their health and their visual acuity problems. They were all excited about the potential for better help into the future and expressed great willingness to be able to help with future research.”

A DVD of the day is being produced and will be distributed to eye departments across the UK to help get birdshot chorioretinopathy better known and understood. 

Ends

Notes to editors

• Birdshot Uveitis Society is part of the charity Uveitis Information Group and provides specialist support and information for people suffering from this rare eye disease.  It is run by patient volunteers for patients. For more information please visit www.birdshot.org.uk 
• Moorfields is one of the world’s leading eye hospitals, providing expertise in clinical care, research and education.  We have provided excellence in eye care for more than 200 years and we continue to be at the forefront of new breakthroughs and developments.   We are an integral part of one of the UK’s first academic health science centres, UCL Partners, and recently celebrated five years as one of the country’s first NHS foundation trusts.
• We treat the entire range of eye diseases, from common complaints to rare conditions which require treatments not available anywhere else in the UK.  We dealt with more than 400,000 patient visits in 2009/10 at our main hospital base in London’s City Road and at 12 other sites in and around the capital, enabling us to provide expert care closer to patients’ homes.
• With our research partners at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, we run one of the largest ophthalmic research programmes in the world and have the highest measure of scientific productivity and impact in the world for our research activity.  
• For further information, please visit www.moorfields.nhs.uk.