Principles of management

Whatever section of pathology is to blame and wherever it strikes, the aim of treatment is always the same. Find the cause if you can. Establish the effects of the cause. Halt the pathological process if you can. Reverse its...

A revolution in modern genetic testing for the clinical management of ocular disease

Recent years have seen a huge increase in our understanding of the genetic factors underlying a wide variety of eye diseases. This has included common conditions such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, as well as those conditions which have...

EU: is it time to leave and embrace the world?

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union (EU) or leave? It’s a big decision involving some complex issues, and there’s no doubt the EU will continue to change. Ipsos MORI’s monthly EU voting intention poll published...

Papilloedema: an update

Some readers may have seen a recent report in the national newspapers of the case of a teenage girl with persistent severe headache associated with a fatal brain tumour having been undiagnosed despite many consultations with her medical advisers. It...

The eye without tears

The Art is long and Life is short. So goes the dispiriting tag in Latin and flung from day one and at regular intervals thereafter at idle medical students who, inevitably brainwashed, come by graduation to believe that the only...

Neuro-ophthalmic disease patterns in Southeast Asia with particular reference to giant cell arteritis

As indicated in an earlier article in Eye News [1] Dr Cullen was invited in 2000 to the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC) as visiting Professor with a specific remit to set up a specialist neuro-ophthalmology service, which was the...

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...

Stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease: researching for an 
effective cure

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterised by the chronic and progressive loss of neurons, which in turn results in loss of cognitive and physical functions. The World Health Organization has estimated that the disability-adjusted life years lost from neurological disease was about...

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...