Bill Harvey: Wheels of confusion

When I worked in the hospital eye service all those years ago, I remember being struck by the need for each patient about to undergo surgery to have a large red arrow on their forehead pointing to whichever eye was to be operated upon. When I asked about this Heath Robinson low-tech approach, I was surprised to learn that working on the wrong eye was a perennial problem that required as many precautions as possible to avoid.

Last week we ran a CET article on intravitreal injections. Not too many years ago, this was the sort of article that used to trigger correspondence of the ‘why do opticians need to know about that?’ variety. Not so today, as increasing numbers of optometrists are supporting ophthalmology by undertaking such procedures. This is a trend likely to continue, Covid-19 or not.