Search

Cavernous sinus syndrome

Anatomically the cavernous sinus is a plexus of multiple veins that are connected and within this plexus there are several important vascular and neurological structures. These include cranial nerves III, IV, V1 (and sometimes V2), VI as well as the...

It’s not always GCA

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is an immune mediated granulomatous inflammatory disease that affects muscular middle or large sized arteries. It is considered as a continuation of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) when the severity of the disease has increased. It is the...

Non-organic visual loss

Patients can present to eye departments with various signs and symptoms (mostly symptoms) with no obvious organic cause. These patients can be labelled with any of a wide range of diagnoses such as functional visual loss, functional overlay, psychosomatic reaction...

What not to miss in neuro-ophthalmology Part 2

As mentioned previously there are several conditions in neuro-ophthalmology that should not be missed by the general ophthalmologist as well as ophthalmology trainees. We discussed in the first part some of these conditions including third cranial nerve palsies, giant cell...

What not to miss in neuro-ophthalmology Part 1

Neuro-ophthalmology is a complex and difficult subspecialty in ophthalmology. It has several connections to neurology, neuro-surgery, rheumatology as well as many other medical specialties. Working in an multidisciplinary team (MDT) environment is key to success in this subspecialty as mistakes...

Feb/Mar 2015 Quiz 1

A 79-year-old male presented to the ophthalmic emergency department with a three week history of left eye pain. He also reported visual deterioration in the left eye over the same period. He suffered from degenerative myopia, with his spectacle prescription...

Aug/Sep 2014 Quiz 2

History A 27-year-old man presented to the emergency department with blurred vision and central scotoma in the right eye (RE) over the previous weeks. He had no relevant medical history and he was not on any current medication. However, he...

Covidiot quiz

I like to read, but on account of the COVID-19 pandemic have probably read more over the past two years than ever before. One of the books that resonated the most was called The 900 Days and was about the...

Interspecialty referrals

Referrals between the many and varied branches of ophthalmology sometimes underline how sub-specialised we have all become nowadays. The old era when everyone was an ophthalmic jack of all trades is gone, for better or for worse, and instead of...

A glossary

After a week on call grading what feels like 13 billion referrals I decided it might be useful to come up with a glossary that might help other people in some way to decipher the true meaning behind every repetitive...

Virtual COVID clinics

The clinics at Ystradgynlais Community Hospital are a little different of late. The nurses are still there, I still get tea with custard creams and the letters I dictate are still all written up by the next day. But there...

Zoom

One of the side-effects of the coronavirus pandemic is that suddenly everything is now done on Zoom. In case anyone is fortunate enough to have no idea what this is, Zoom is an app that allows virtual meetings to take...