What’s the point? She’s confused. Don’t bother giving her glasses. She doesn’t watch TV and she doesn’t read. We hear this all the time when we are examining people with dementia. We could spend all day long telling you what the point is and we could spend all week telling you why we bother.

Dementia, sight, nutrition, stimulation, vulnerability, etc. are not factors which live in isolation but rather all mix together to create the person we care for. It can be so easy to label someone with their headline condition and in doing so miss out on opportunities to improve quality of life.

As opticians, we would like to suggest ways in which sight and visual health fits into the day-to-day life of someone living with dementia. Whilst, through nerve damage, dementia can affect sight, we would stress the positive effect good sight can have on dementia.

Over the past 10 years, optomise have carried out over 50 000 eye examinations on people with some form of dementia. We have provided these examinations in people’s own homes, care homes, sheltered accommodations and in hospitals. We tailor our examination to each individual’s needs and have specialised equipment which we use to assess vision where communication is difficult. Over those 10 years we have seen behaviours, which were being induced by sight problems, being solely and wrongly put down to dementia. If we fail to address the sight problem we will lose the opportunity to improve quality of life, independence, mobility and safety. 

In the care home setting, where spectacles are needed, we discretely engrave both the patient’s name and what the glasses are to be used for onto the frame.

To arrange an eye examination at home give us a call on 0800 5878 248