Bill Harvey: Child in his eyes

When sharing patient records over a Zoom video meeting as part of their pre-registration assessments, trainees have to remember to honour the Data Protection Act 2018 and redact any personal identifiers to ensure anonymisation. When the date of birth is removed, I find it useful to ask whether it is possible to assess the health of someone’s eyes without knowing their age.

Age is important, not only as a predictor of the likelihood of developing the majority of major eye disease, but it is also an indication of whether specific ocular structures are normal for age. Obvious examples include the brunescence of a 60-year-old’s crystalline lens, or the peripheral corneal degeneration in the elderly; neither would be considered a concern when looked at in context of the patient’s age. Assessing the retinal vasculature is, I would suggest, a little trickier.