Bill Harvey: Faerie tales

It’s always reassuring, if a little surprising, to find out that someone other than a certain Mrs Trellis reads this column. It’s even better when some of you get in touch over a clinical matter.

It would seem, therefore, that I am not alone in observing a general decline in retinoscopy among some of our younger colleagues. Are we just autorefractor-denying Luddites?

No; retinoscopy is an essential and flexible way of objective refraction that offers an accurate view of variability of accommodation, media clarity and refractive error, the latter helping us to modify the typically less than accurate subjective responses of the patient to lens presentations.