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My experience of the transition into a specialist orthoptist role

Michelle Dent discusses the process of transitioning into a new role and the pros and cons along the way. An opportunity arose for a permanent, full time, band 7 specialist role in the medical retina (MR) team in the Newcastle...

Assessing everyday visual function in dry AMD – what matters to the person?

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the primary cause of blindness in the developed world and is accountable for more than one half of sight impairment registrations within England and Wales [1]. AMD is prevalent in people aged 60 years and...

Retinal prosthetics: science fiction or a vision for the future?

“Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?” – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House...

Stem cell transplantation and pterygium surgery

Pterygium is a benign, fibrovascular overgrowth of bulbar conjunctiva extending onto the cornea and has been associated with ultraviolet (UV) light exposure. The prevalence of pterygium worldwide varies between geographical zones but has been reported to range between three and...

Corneal transplantation in the United Kingdom: are we blind to the challenges that still exist after the Organ Donation Bill?

Corneal transplantation (CT) is a significant treatment option for a huge number of patients in the United Kingdom (UK) [1]. For an individual, CT results in a substantial improvement in quality of life. Penetrating keratoplasty with full thickness grafting has...

Blame the lens – not its position – in refractive surprise

Aetiology of postoperative refractive surprise Weber coined the term “wrong eye, wrong intraocular lens, wrong patient” in 2008 as an aide memoir of major factors believed to underlie refractive surprise – defined as a significant unintended difference between dioptric refraction...

Artificial intelligence in eyecare: how do we ensure new technologies truly benefit our patients?

From monitoring patients with heart disease to improving the early diagnosis of cancer, artificial intelligence (AI) using deep learning techniques is already employed in many different healthcare specialties [1]. In the eyecare field, AI technologies have been used to analyse...

Mucormycosis: In conversation with Dr Deepak Haldipur and Dr Aditya Moorthy

COVID-19 has ravaged the world in the past 18 months. The second wave in many countries was deadlier than the first. Mucormycosis, infamously labelled ‘the black fungus’ has affected some countries, such as India, in epidemic proportions within this COVID...

#KnowYourDrops: breaking down barriers to poor compliance

Award-winning* #KnowYourDrops eye drop compliance campaign helps patients for World Glaucoma Week to achieve medicines optimisation in ophthalmology. The #KnowYourDrops campaign is fast becoming an internationally recognised model to help support healthcare professionals, with the provision of better tailored ophthalmic...

Effect of the COVID-19 Urgent Eyecare Service on patient referrals to general practitioners and Hospital Eye Service

The COVID-19 Urgent Eyecare Services (CUES) was developed to relieve the demands of hospital ophthalmology, aiming to allow patients to have remote consultations and be managed by community optometric practice. This was because access to Hospital Eye Service (HES) Ophthalmic...

Insights on medical AI for ophthalmology: an update on current perspectives

Artificial intelligence (AI) has immense promise for revolutionising medical practice. Generative AI is a form of AI in which algorithms are trained on datasets that can be used to generate new content, such as text, images or video based on...

East Bound and Down: Patrick Staropoli

One of my heroes growing up in the 70s was the iconic Formula 1 racing driver, James Hunt. At the time, if you had asked me and my primary school friends what we would most like to do for a...