Regulatory drug evaluations and expedited review initiatives: EU and US perspectives

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) each conduct independent assessments of benefit-risk profile when evaluating applications to market new or modified medicines, and their respective decision-making is guided by distinct legislation, procedures and...

Can thou lyse this? A national study of emergency canthotomy and cantholysis

Eighty-two-year old Janet Smith woke up on the floor. Had she been unconscious? Her head hurt. It was the middle of the night, but in the darkness she suddenly wasn’t sure whether she could see out of her right eye....

The Global Vision Database

The overall goal of the Global Vision Database (GVD) [1] is to develop and deploy new and improved evidence on the prevalence of blindness and vision impairment (VI) globally. It is a repository which allows us to assess the causes...

Blind Veterans UK calls on eye health professionals to direct blind and vision impaired veterans to vital support

A national charity is asking ophthalmologists and eye health professionals to help them reach out to the tens of thousands of blind and vision impaired ex-service men and women who are currently missing out on vital support to help them...

Ophthalmology in ancient india, Sushruta’s time and the modern era

While reading an article related to the history of Indian ophthalmology, I came across this description of a surgical procedure: “The doctor warmed the patient’s eye with the breath of his mouth. He rubbed the closed eye of the patient...

Open source and tele-manufacturing for ophthalmology

Open source or crowd-sourcing and crowd-collaboration are concepts almost always associated with software and public online projects such as Wiki project. Never had I imagined that my team would apply the same principle in ophthalmology. Just less than a month...

Refractionist’s shoulder?

After hearing the letter-box, I walked to the front door and stooped down to collect my latest edition of Eye News. I winced. Still, at least it would give me something to pass the time on this, my first day...

The ophthalmologist’s elbow: a potentially painful point of contact

Three months ago I leant, in the customary manner, on the box of my indirect lens at the slit lamp to examine a patient’s fundus. An acute and severe pain in the tip of my elbow immediately interrupted me. I...

Patient and public participation shapes biomedical research and access priorities in eye health

Patients, clinicians and clinician-scientists play a valuable role in shaping the future of vision research. Limited funding demands targeted research initiatives that ultimately will shape health policy and practice to secure progress in improving patient outcomes in eye health. This...

Complex Biometry Clinics: a new service development

In this article we describe a new local service development, the ‘Complex Biometry Clinic’ at Leicester Royal Infirmary. Retrospective data analysis of patients referred between October 2012 and October 2013 was performed. The aim was to provide a one-stop service...

Comic leaflets: an innovative method of patient education

Nowadays almost everyone has been exposed to comics, especially during childhood. In a way, this is a natural form of progression from children’s story books, which also contain words and pictures. This exposure has helped us to develop the graphic...

An eyeful of independence

Scots will decide this September whether or not Scotland should be an independent sovereign state. “As all key areas of our business are already fully devolved, it’s very much business as usual for us,” noted a spokesperson for Healthcare Improvement...