Getting into the spirit

On the very morning that I was due to try out the new Heidelberg Spectralis Spirit for the first time, the latest guidelines from NICE were announced concerning the diagnosis and management of age-related macular degeneration.

Though it might be argued there was little of surprise in the new guidelines, one sentence stood out to me: ‘If you suspect late AMD (wet active), you may offer OCT to decide whether to refer for further investigations, including FFA, provided that you have been trained to interpret the data and feel competent to do so.’ If indeed it were needed, this is good evidence that the OCT is now an accepted part of community eye care instrumentation and, as the largest multiple chain introduce OCTs, it cannot be long before the majority of practices offer OCT.