A retired Buckinghamshire optometrist has this week (Wednesday, July 13) been found not guilty of the charge of serious professional misconduct by a disciplinary committee of the General Optical Council in London.
Brian Suttie of Brian Drew Suttie Optician in Chesham had already retired, but he re-registered with the GOC after accusations were made in order to defend his name.
Suttie was accused of failing to examine a patient's visual field, test the reaction of the patient's pupils or make adequate recordings of the appointment on October 15 2002.
Joan Northcott had been a patient of Suttie for over 15 years and made the appointment after noticing that she could not see a ball during a game of table tennis.
She received a standard eye examination and chose a new pair of varifocal spectacles with an unchanged prescription.
However, Northcott continued to have problems with her eyes and on January 24 2003 she fainted and collapsed.
She was referred to a medical assessment unit and a neurologist but a brain scan revealed no problems.
In July 2003 Northcott returned to Suttie and described her symptoms, he then conducted an eye examination and visual field test. Suttie told Northcott not to drive and called her back for a further red dot test. He also referred her to her GP.
Northcott's GP referred her to two consultant ophthalmologists who diagnosed glaucoma. She has recently been registered partially sighted.
GOC representative David Bradly accused Suttie of failing to detect the glaucoma early enough. 'Brian Suttie failed to treat the patient properly and failed to carry out a field test.' There was a clear risk to the public interest, he said.
But for Suttie, Sandhya Kapilla said that Northcott had not complained of visual loss at her appointment on October 15 2002, and that it was Suttie's professional judgement at the time not to carry out a field test or to refer her.
Chairman of the committee David Pyle concluded: 'We consider that you should have followed College of Optometrists guidelines in 2002 and performed a visual field test.'
He also criticised Suttie's record keeping.
However, given Suttie's history and previous experience, Pyle said his actions did not constitute serious professional misconduct.