There are two parts to the book; the first section makes up the bulk to the textbook and covers clinical aspects of emergency ophthalmology, and the second discusses the management and organisation of an emergency and rapid access service.
Part 1 is a whistle stop tour through multiple different emergencies spilt into:
- Trauma
- True ophthalmic emergencies; Non traumatic
- Urgent eye conditions
- Conditions requiring same day management
- Rapid access: Neurology
- Rapid access: Retina
- Referrals from other hospital departments (toxic effects of drugs)
- Paediatrics
- Online resources.
In each of these sections a condition is given a paragraph or two and that’s because they go straight to the point in terms of what you are looking for, the most appropriate way to assess the patient, the immediate management and when to bring the patient back. It’s an interesting approach and is certainly very different to other emergency texts.
Throughout there are grey boxes which may detail how to do a particular procedure, e.g. lateral canthotomy, temporal artery biopsy, corneal scrape, etc. There are also tables with suggestions as to what you could ask during a systemic review for uveitis, for example.
Part two of the book is where it’s unique. They provide advice as to how you might manage or triage emergencies and also protocols of how you might manage conditions such as uveitis or giant cell arteritis. They don’t just give potential treatments or generic advice. There are also useful reference charts, such as charts converting Snellen to LogMAR or the chart for corneal thickness intraocular pressure correction.
The protocols, in particular, could be helpful to anyone trying to create guidelines themselves as part of a service improvement project.
This book doesn’t pretend it’s going to give you all the information you need to understand emergency ophthalmology or give you a step by step guide to set up a new emergency unit. It does deliver what it says it will; succinct coverage of emergencies and advice on how to organise an emergency unit.
