Mission Statement Island Eyes: Our goal is to provide high quality products along with high quality services. We intend to do this by focusing on our patients needs and requirements. We intend to take a market oriented approach when deciding on services and products that will be made available whilst fulfilling our professional obligations. We intend to do this by relying on personal service yet remaining at the cutting edge of technology.
The inspiration for Island Eyes Optical Boutique started whilst I was a student at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) studying optometry. There is a very trendy area of Manchester called Deansgate near the City centre .As a student I would go window shopping on Saturday afternoon. There were several boutiques that carried very stylish, trendy, and high quality products. Mainly clothes and shoe stores .One could rest assured that any of these would be the latest fashions and hi quality and items. Assuming that you were willing to pay the price one was never disappointed with what you bought. This was in 1986 just a year after the dispensing of glasses had been deregulated in England. Glasses were not yet considered a fashion accessory but a necessary evil.

I have always believed that spectacles can be sold in this environment. Subconsciously I began studying what made these boutiques what they were. Subsequently I found similar boutiques in London, Paris ,Nice, Cannes , Monte Carlo, Milan, Florence etc. all the European cities that I visited as a student.
Essentially the elements are the same. Whilst paying attention to style ,the personal service you received assured that the styles suited you rather than one becoming a fashion victim.

After leaving University in 1989.I was required to work in practice under supervision for three years whilst I wrote my professional qualifying examinations. After successfully qualifying in 1992 I returned to Trinidad a month later to my first job as a fully qualified optometrist.
My fifteen years working in Trinidad and interrupted only by a year and half in St Lucia .Taught me that whilst the principles are the same, our (the Caribbean) eye care needs are somewhat different from our European even North American neighbors.

We suffer from a much higher incidence of Glaucoma in the Caribbean. This is a chronic eye disease that is virtually without symptoms until the late stages. Classically it produces tunnel vision and will lead to blindness if left untreated. Ironically it is easily controlled by the use of eye drops in most cases especially if it is caught in the early stages. In England you see this disease commonly affects adults 40years and over .In the Caribbean we often see young adults in their mid- twenties developing signs of this disease. In practice I often find it necessary to screen young adults for this insidious disease. However because there are no symptoms in its early stages we find that many people discover problem far too late and lose their sight needlessly. Anyone with a family history of glaucoma should have his or her eyes tested at least once a year
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Another chronic condition that affects our people in the Caribbean with a much higher incidence than our European and North American counterparts is a disease called Keratoconus .This condition is very rare in England and North America, but we find it a relatively common condition in Trinidad particularly. Not enough research has been done to investigate the cause of this condition. Keratoconus causes a progressive thinning of the clear part of the eye called the cornea. This causes the cornea to bulge forward producing very high spectacle prescriptions and poor vision .This cannot be properly corrected or managed by the use of spectacles, we have to manage this condition using rigid gas permeable contact lenses. Eventually if that does not work the next option is corneal surgery

There is also a high incidence of diabetes in Trindad, diabetes can cause changes in the eye which lead to
blindness , as eye care professionals we have an important role to play in the screening of diabetics .At Island Eyes we recommend that diabetics have a comprehensive eye test at least once a year.

In the tropics we are exposed to a higher degree of harmful Ultra violet light from the sun, this leads to a high incidence of cataracts in our elderly population, along with associated conditions such as pinguecula and pteryguim formation. We recommend that all Caribbean people should wear some form of protective eyewear when outdoors.

It is very important that the spectacles or sunglasses selected inhibit ultra violet radiation as simply wearing a dark pair of sunglasses; “darkers” with no UV inhibition can actually be more detrimental to the eye than wearing none at all. This is because with dark glasses the pupil dilates and allows more UV light into the eye.

These conditions normally develop slowly over a few years,and left unchecked they can lead to a loss of vision.