These are links related to opthalmology which I found interesting. More links will be added to this page over time.

• The LV Prasad Eye Institute is a world class centre of excellence for eye research in Hyderabad, India. I did my fellowship in glaucoma from there, and I was delighted by the professionalism of the place - it was run by some good people that usually managed to ensure the highest standards were adhered to. If I had not had other commitments, I would have stayed on. I urge any ophthalmologist that is passionate about their work to go there at least once.

• ORBIS is an organisation that works together with local people worldwide with the aim of preserving and restoring eyesight by skills transfer. One of the programmes they run is the Flying Eye Hospital, which is a DC10 converted into a teaching eye hospital. I was there as a staff ophthalmologist during February and March 2005 and met up with some really learned and talented people.

  As an Indian, I was pleased to see that some of the local Indian hospitals were able to pass an innovation or two back to the ORBIS teachers too. We do have some of the world's best ophthalmologists in India after all.

  One of the highlights of this period was when APJ Kalam (the president) came for a visit to the DC10. After he made some inquiries in his usual incisive engineer's manner (ie zeroing in on where things could be improved), he took the initiative to arrange for the teaching to be telecast via ISRO satellite uplink from the plane to all over India. We were all quite impressed by this remarkable man.

• The Aravind Eye Hospital is another renowned and well-managed centre of excellence for eye care in South India. They were the pioneers in the implementation of a low-cost, high quality, high volume treatment programme for cataract surgery. They have essentially eradicated cataract blindness in a huge area around themselves. Others have attempted to replicate their success in North India but have failed so far, mainly due to short term strategies; lack of commitment to quality; and managerial problems. It is a sad truth that besides myopia of the eye, there is such a thing as myopia of the mind.

  Aravind are addressing this problem by doing management training type of courses for eye hospital management. I believe a hierarchy of eye hospitals following the Aravind or Disha model (see next item in this list) is the most viable way to solve the large and growing backlog of cataract blindness in North India. The vision 2020 programme has this as part of its plan too. I have high hopes of these efforts.

• The Disha Eye Hospital is a new, well-equipped, well-run eye hospital, originally in Barrackpore, with an even newer branch in Hooghly, near Calcutta. The people there are very committed and professional, and they have implemented the best methods from the best institutions. It was a great pleasure to see the way they worked, and they are making quite an impact on the backlog of cataract patients in that part of eastern India. They have successfully approached cataract treatment along the lines of the Aravind model, ie: by focusing on low-cost, high quality and high volume treatment. I took some snapshots and put up some commentary here after a visit to their Barrackpore site. I found the place inspirational.

• The myopia prevention page is a page by "vision amateurs" (their description). It claims that most myopia can be prevented. While this runs counter to the conventional wisdom in the field, there is now some evidence from the COMET (Correction of Myopia Evaluation Trial) study in their favour. However, I must emphasize that the results were so minor that no change in current eye prescription practice is advised. An interesting review article of attempts to arrest myopia is in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, 26 June 2002.

• N-acetylcarnosine (NAC) has been studied and promoted as an anti-cataract medicine, ie a non-surgical treatment of cataracts. However, the evidence is shaky: The Royal College of Ophthalmologists in the UK has said in December 2004 that the research has not been corroborated or replicated, and that more research is needed.

  My own assessment: Surgical intervention is cheaper and more effective. NAC may also have some unknown side-effects. The only role NAC may have (if Dr Mark Babizhayev's study is replicated and corroborated), is perhaps for wealthier patients who cannot, or more commonly, refuse to have surgery.

  Besides the cataract treatment claims for NAC, there are claims made that it cures all sorts of other eye problems. Such claims make it seem like snake-oil (ie bogus medicine).

  In conclusion, until NAC has been scientifically proven to my satisfaction, I personally will not recommend it for cataract treatment, let alone anything else.

• Webvision is an excellent site about the organisation of the retina and visual system.

• There may be mutant women tetrachromats among us!. The term tetrachromat is normally used by vision researchers to describe a possible colour response (between red and green responses) which may (rarely) be present in some mutant women. Some birds, like doves, are thought to be pentachromats, which is perhaps surprising when you consider the size of the human visual cortex and the size of the bird brain. Perhaps the epithet "birdbrain" needs a revision).

• Here's a snippet about a cave-dwelling subspecies of fish that is congenitally blind, but which gains vision after a lens surgery. Vision restoration in congenital cataract humans is much harder. Why are our brains almost unable to see in such cases? For obvious reasons this is not an area of experimental research in humans.

• This BMJ article from January 2005 reviews developments in retinal vision restoration technology. I find it particularly fascinating because such prosthetics were science fiction just a few years ago (think of Geordi from Star Trek).

• Blink and you really do miss it. An investigation that shows that the brain switches off while we blink. Go on, try blinking normally now and see if your brain is aware of the darkness.

• Airline pilots have a greater risk of cataract than non-pilots, according to an August 2005 paper in the Archives of Ophthalmology. The risk is no doubt linked with the greater exposure to radiation, but it is the first time that a correlation has been shown. Astronauts are also given a mention. Nothing about the other cabin crew or frequent travellers, though. On a related note, I wonder if cataract rates are significantly higher in places with greater background radiation, like Aberdeen in the UK, or Kerala in India? Or for people who get x-rays and CT scans done more often?

• My ophthalmological web diary containing some of the more personal observations in my professional life. Not quite a blog, because it is fairly infrequent.Also mirrored at ourmedia.

• Eye resources on the internet - more links than you can shake a stick at, maintained by the association of vision source librarians.