Mrs Optician Editor is inclined to thrust copies of the Mail on Sunday at me over the bacon and eggs at the weekend.

The Mail does quite a nice line in health journalism and as such optics does appear  quite regularly. This weekend there was a story about how it might be best not to have a gold-plated eye examination with one of these new fangled scanning laser thingys on the basis that it might frighten you with false diagnoses.

Clearly the poor journalist had been invited to a retinal scan by a clinic keen to show off  some nice new kit. Unfortunately it highlighted something, which the clinic took seriously. Luckily it proved to benign but scared the b'jesus out of the hack along the way.

Cue the quote from ophthalmologist saying all these new fanged bits of kit are for the worried well and if you are asymptomatic steer well clear.

This is the price the clinic, and the equipment maker pay, for upsetting a hack. Now if that smudge hadn't been benign the headline would have been 10 minute test saved my life.

Well you win some, you lose some. But hey, don't go frightening Her Majesty's Press.

Read the complete post at http://www.opticianonline.net/blogs/big-optometry-blog/2012/04/optician-frightens-journalist.html