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Aug/Sep 2014 Quiz 1

History A 50-year-old female with a history of smoking, weight loss and cough presents to the ophthalmology clinic with a distorted pupil. Examination reveals a mass on the surface and within the iris (see Figure 1). The ophthalmologists decide to...

Apr/May 2014 Quiz 2

History A 29-year-old woman presented to the emergency department with a two week history of floaters and patchy peripheral visual field loss in the left eye (LE). She had no relevant medical history and she was not on any current...

Existential Crises

Over the past few years and months, I have noticed increased numbers of my colleagues from all over the UK complaining about various problems with their jobs and life in general, and it seems that since the COVID-19 pandemic the...

In bed with Adnan Tufail

I used to like conferences. In fact, I loved them. When Euretina was in Paris in 2019 I met up with friends and colleagues, went out to bars and restaurants and took some time to see the Arc de Triomphe...

Is ophthalmology still a vocation?

People seem to be interested in medicine for different reasons. There does seem to be a spectrum in ophthalmology in which people range from ‘do it for the pay’ all the way to ‘do it for the patients’, with some...

How to consent patients

I attended a morning seminar at the recent College Congress in Liverpool about how to properly and legally consent a patient for a procedure. There has been a lot of interest in this of late following the Montgomery ruling, in...

Your precious submission is awaited

It is one of the great trials of medical life trying to get things published. Where once upon a time a few case reports and being eighth author on a paper or two was more than sufficient to secure a...

The vitreoretinal priesthood

When I first started doing cataract lists, the consultant at the time, a Mr Brown from Carmarthen, used to say that phacoemulsification was more akin to flying a jet fighter for short dangerous bombing runs than a boring long haul...

Will it change management?

Like most doctors I have read and am a fan of Samuel Shem’s House of God, with my favourite Rule being Rule 10: “If you don’t take a temperature you can’t find a fever.” If you don’t intend to treat...

Handover of power

Election time comes every five years in the United Kingdom. It is usually a time of excitement and trepidation as people wonder what will change, for whom and over how long, depending on which party might win power. Usually it...

Turn up anytime

When I was starting off in ophthalmology my then boss had a standard spiel after completing a cataract case. It did not vary and I do not recall an instance of it not taking place. “The operation went well and...

The only thing to fear is fear itself

There is a song by the Amateur Transplants called ‘Finals Fantasy’ which describes in humorous detail how stressful clinical exams can be. Having not done any viva or objectively structured clinical examination (OSCE) style exams for many years indeed I...