The past few decades of surgery since the ‘mad cow disease’ have been dominated by a push to switch to disposable instruments. The reason is to prevent cross-contamination and reduce the risk of surgical site infections – especially so with...
When I worked as a registrar at Newport many years ago I remember a no-nonsense corneal consultant railing about the way the tragic case of Lucie Linforth was being reported in the media. Lucie was a toddler taken into a...
“And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid. And Cain went out...
Rudyard Kipling was a very wise chap. He was in San Francisco towards the end of the 19th century and noticed that in some bars and saloons the house was giving away free lunches for every patron who first purchased...
I recently had the signal pleasure of undergoing Part 2 of the FRCOphth exit exam and could not help but wonder at how examiners could on the whole be easily categorised into certain subtypes which readers may find fascinating. This...
Although it’s autumn, it’s not too cold and the slight breeze blowing up from the sea does not make me regret leaving my jacket in clinic. It’s a strange site; hundreds of hospital staff standing on either side of the...
The Prophet Daniel tells a famous tale of how the tyrannical king of Babylon held a feast for all his top lords and ladies, and as the feasting grew to fever pitch a mysterious hand appeared from nowhere that started...
History A 48-year-old farmer with gradual worsening vision in her only eye was referred by her optician. She had recently moved to the UK and required an interpreter during consultation. She seemed to have had vision problems since childhood. Although...
The point of this series is to find variations in practice and to raise them to you, the readership, so you can review and reflect upon them. I am aware there is not always a ‘correct’ way of doing things,...
An 82-year-old frail lady was referred by her optometrist with a finding of subluxated implant in the right eye. She had uneventful phacoemulcification with in-the-bag intraocular implant 17 years earlier. There is no history of having had pseudoexfoliation (PXF) or...
An experienced ophthalmologist can make an anatomical diagnosis of childhood visual impairment based upon the surgical sieve, i.e., congenital and acquired. But an ophthalmologist cannot work in isolation to make an aetiological diagnosis – one would require the help of...
We present a case of a seven-year-old male who presented to the emergency eye referral clinic with red eye. He was diagnosed and treated for allergic conjunctivitis, however, on clinic review, wide field retinal imaging was performed (as has been...