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The ROP Network: a south-south collaboration to improve care for premature babies

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a disorder of the immature preterm retina and a leading cause of preventable, irreversible blindness in children. There are 15 million preterm births annually, and over 32,000 neonates became blind from ROP in 2010 [1]....

From novice to overnight on-calls: developing an ophthalmology bootcamp to ease the learning curve for new trainees

Introduction My first ophthalmology on-call was nine years ago and it was a fairly traumatic experience. I was an FY2 in a Welsh district general hospital and I was on my own – at least, that’s how it felt to...

Blinded by an Ofsted inspection

Introduction The Association of Health Professions in Ophthalmology (AHPO) is a charity, whose objectives are to promote the practice, education, training and research in ophthalmology and vision science in the UK. The extraordinary developments in diagnostic equipment and technologies have...

Part 2: the Arclight Device: frugal imaging for eyecare

In this three-part series (Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 3) Andrew Blaikie and his team explore the role and application of the Arclight Device in Imaging of the Eye. There are many different types of ophthalmic...

General purpose AI: Transitioning from high performance in highly curated settings to useful applications in ophthalmology

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be understood as the ability of machines to perform tasks which otherwise require human perception, reasoning, or learning. With the advent of deep learning, AI has achieved remarkable results across a wide range of medical tasks...

The lived experience of benign essential blepharospasm

Benign essential blepharospasm (BEB) is a rare neurological condition which causes involuntary sustained or intermittent muscular contraction of both eyelids and upper facial muscles which cause closure of eyelids, abnormal facial expressions and distress [1]. The term dystonia is an...

Congenital and paediatric cataract: Advances in diagnosis and management

Congenital and paediatric cataracts are relatively rare, although prevalence varies significantly between countries, influenced by factors such as nutrition, immunisation policy and population genetics [1]. In the UK, around 3–4 of every 10,000 babies are born with cataracts. It’s a...

The ‘theatre of the mind’: Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Esme’s Umbrella

The founder of Esme’s Umbrella shares her experience with the poorly understood condition Charles Bonnet Syndrome and the creation of the campaign. Many years ago, when I was a young actress, I was in an American play called ‘Butterflies are...

Cataract surgery in corneal disease

Cataract surgery in the presence of corneal disease presents multiple challenges, from determining whether symptoms are lenticular or corneal in origin, to decisions regarding timing of surgery, intraocular lens (IOL) power calculation, IOL selection, surgical technique and perioperative care. Realistic...

Maximising the ocular surface prior to cataract surgery: The old and the new modalities of treatment

Cataract surgery is among the most commonly performed surgical procedures worldwide. Over time, it has evolved from a lens-extraction procedure into a refractive intervention that demands meticulous perioperative planning and precision to achieve optimal outcomes. Optimisation of the ocular surface...