Bill Harvey: Icicles within my brain

When I was asked recently whether I might be interested in an article looking at pharmacovigilance in optometric practice, I confess my first thought was to head to Google. ‘Pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other medicine/vaccine-related problem.’

Most of us are aware of the common adverse responses to drugs; those well profiled, not requiring yellow card scheme reporting and lacking the black triangle symbol in their BNF online listing. Last month, I came across a patient showing early posterior subcapsular cataract. On questioning, it was confirmed that some months previously they had been in intensive care with Covid-19 and had been treated with high doses of dexamethasone.