Salus Joins Effort to Tackle Disabling Concussion-Induced Eye Disorder
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Salus Joins Effort to Tackle Disabling Concussion-Induced Eye Disorder
Backed by a $3.7 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Mitchell Scheiman, OD, PhD ‘16, dean of research and professor in the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University and an expert on convergence insufficiency (CI), will be part of a multi-institutional team seeking to establish guidelines that will help clinicians diagnose and treat concussion-related CI.
CI is a condition in which an individual has trouble controlling eye alignment when reading or doing any near work. The funding follows a $2 million NIH grant that will enable Dr. Scheiman and his longtime clinical partner, Dr. Tara Alvarez, to first investigate CI in people without head injuries.
The team — which also includes optometrists, engineers, vision researchers, sports medicine physicians, balance experts and biostatisticians — is enrolling a demographically diverse group of 100 participants between the ages of 15 and 25 with persistent symptoms of CI one-to-three months post-trauma in clinical trials at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Robert Wood Johnson’s Somerset Pediatric Group in New Jersey. The source of their concussions varies, from falls to car accidents to sports injuries.
