OT 'Full Clinical Record' systmonline

[alan_m]

It was the jet of air test at the opticians that got me the appointment(s) with the consultant approx 1 week later.

The consultant squirted some stinging lubricant/anistetic into my eye and then wound a probe into the surface each of of my eyeballs. All over in the space of a minute and it was pronounced that there wasn't a problem. Despite this the same test was performed a month later in the follow-up appointment. The second appointment included a lengthy field of view test overseen by a nurse. This latter test lasted approx 10/15 minutes per eye.

I assume that the jet of air test is only a rough guide in much the same way as retinal photos at an optician possible only give a general indication of the eye condition as they don't include drops to dilate the pupils. Yearly diabetic eye test photos are performed after applying drops to dilate pupils which afterwards make the eyes very sensitive to sunlight and with a warning that you shouldn't drive for at least 2 to 4 hours.

[Harry Bloomfield]

alan_m formulated the question :

I had some concerns raised initially by an opticians, some 12 months ago, after they spotted some burst blood vessels in my right eye. Since then I have had three more tests, the latest with an opthalmic surgeon in hospital.

All four tests were exactly the same, drops in the eye to dilute, vision check, photos taken of the back of the eye and a pressure check via a squirt of air. The opticians test included a field of view check, staring a a point of light, pushing a button when a second point of light appeared at the edge of the field, that took only a minute or two for both eyes.

I passed all the tests, the only point of concern was the damaged blood vessels. The specialist's opinion was that they were of no concern at all, as they were well outside my main field of view and unlikely to become worse.

[Andrew]

But of no practical use to you what-so-ever, unless you are one of those serial compo-claimers. Operation->Solicitor.

[Andrew]

Images consume vast amounts of data storage, most of which never really needs to be stored. After that is free format text like pathology and microbiology reports. Most haematology and Chemical pathology output is tabular numerical stuff which is the easiest to store, though the Consultant haematologist or Biochemist wishing to add free format text then has a problem.

In the 70's when computer storage was measured in Kbytes this was a real problem, which is why only 6 UK hospitals made any effort, but they had special funding from the Ministry of Silly Health to develop and implement computerised data handling of pathology data.

St Thomas's hosp had a Rank Xerox IBM 360 clone. The London Hospital and QE Birmingham had Univac 418-III's with a truly enormous horizontal drum called a Fastrand. The read write heads were on a horizontal bar with massive solenoids pushing and pulling from side to side.

Prior to that TLH had an Elliot 803 which apparently had a tape drive that used mag tape with sprocket holes.:-)

[Andrew]

Most normal people don't have 'yearly' blood tests though.

[Pamela]

Those were the days! :)

There's now some high speed NHS network for images which lets my local hospital send scans to other hospitals as required.

If I have any private scans I try and get them uploaded onto the NHS network so all my doctors can have access although you need a willing NHS doctor to upload them for you.

Conversely, some private doctors I've seen will log on to their NHS account from the private hospital and can then look at my NHS data. It's probably not really allowed under the data privacy rules.

[alan_m]

Define "normal" If you have an ongoing condition you are likely to have a blood test once or twice a year. For instance, this is likely for the 4 million people who have diabetes in the uk.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I seem to have about 2 a month :-(

[Chris Smith]

Are you sure? On this group?

I think we should accept that most of the readers here are over a certain age. I would suspect many or most are on regular medication hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, etc,... I think in such cases there would is a yearly blood test to check liver and kidney functions are not affected.

I just gave this blood test as an example. Obviously if you don't have regular consultations or tests, access to the records will be less attractive to you. However even then record access might still help. I had an emergency tetanus vaccine a few years ago as I had forgotten that I had had one only 5 years before, if I had access to my records I wouldn't have bothered.