New opthamology centre opens near Irthlingborough
It's set to cut down on the need for treatment at Kettering General
Last updated 17th Jan 2025
The new £250,000 state-of-the-art one-stop ophthalmology suite is for patients who need injections in the eye.
It is located at Nene Park Outpatients Centre, near Irthlingborough, and will serve eye patients in the north of the county.
Having the centre will mean that patients don’t have to go to Kettering General Hospital to have their procedure in an operating theatre – or make repeat visits to hospital - but will have a quick and easy one-stop visit to the specialist suite.
Kettering General Hospital’s Clinical Lead Ophthalmology Jayshree Menon, said:
“Developing an ophthalmology suite instead of using operating theatres for these procedures is the way forward for these kinds of procedures.
“It frees up the hospital’s operating theatres for emergency and waiting list procedures and enables eye injections to be delivered to the same standard in a purpose-built suite which has an air exchange systems similar to those used in operating theatres.
“It will also, over the longer term, enable us to reduce waiting times for these procedures and reduce the need for repeat visits to hospital because of a lack of theatre availability.
”The suite will be used to treat conditions like macular degeneration (an eye disease that blurs central vision) and diabetic retinopathy (where the centre of the retina becomes leaky or blocked) using injections of medications designed to prevent or reverse further degeneration."
Ophthalmology Nurse Specialist Trina Cherry is one of two nurses who deliver the injections. She said:
“Having these injections is very important for our patients and they are known as high-impact interventions because they can slow down, and in some cases reverse, the progress of certain eye problems. This enables the patients to maintain their quality of life for as long as possible.
“The injections are delivered by a specialist ophthalmic nurse, registered nurse or doctor in the clean room supported by healthcare assistants with consultants and doctors available for advice.
“In addition to the injection clean room our new suite has a tunnel vision room – where we carry out eye tests similar to those you might have with an optician and a refrigeration area, where we keep the medications used in the injections.”
The service will start by seeing 84 patients per week but build up to more than 140 per week in coming weeks.