Interesting Reads

1–10 of 38 articles Page 1 of 4
  1. 25 Jan 2025 8 min read

    Primer for a Novice Researcher

    1.Steps before starting your research journey: Choose a broad area in your discipline (Ophthalmology) that fascinates you. Medical rather than surgical disciplines offer more research opportunities. Know that inflammations of the uvea and retinal diseases offer immense opportunities for interdisciplinary research. Get cross-disciplinary training to gain insight into disease epidemiology, etiopathogenesis, and management. Dr J.D.M. Gass, the father of the modern medical retina, and Prof Narsing Rao trained in pathology and ophthalmology. Likewise, Dr. Jim Rosenbaum trained in rheumatology and immunology and did pioneering research in uveitis. Drs. Robert Nussenblatt and Manabu Mochizuki were trained in both immunology and ophthalmology. Drs. John Kempen and Emmett Cunningham were trained in public health and ophthalmology. Many other researchers like them who trained in more than one discipline also became world leaders in their respective fields. Attend a course in research methodology

    Prof. Amod Gupta
  2. 15 Feb 2022 10 min read

    Top 10 Tips for Young Researchers

    1. Ask a question: One of the many things that I learnt from my mentor Prof Amod Gupta is to learn the art of asking a question. Though our society is changing with times and encouraging the students to ask questions, I still see hesitation amongst our residents to ask a question about any subject being discussed or question the way of management; even though they may not agree. As a result, many of the research ideas that could have been generated by an honest question, remain unanswered. Each research proposal starts with a question and if every young student is inquisitive to ask questions; try to find answer if they exist and finally try to solve issues that do not have any answers yet, we will be able to solve many mysteries that will help in better management of our patient. It may sometimes take a lifetime to answer a very simple question but believe me that’s totally worth it. I remember when I was a junior resident and there was this beautiful study by Dr. Biswas published in

    Prof. Vishali Gupta
  3. 7 Feb 2022 7 min read

    Ten Lessons I Learnt from My Patients

    Greet your patients by their name: As the patient enters your chamber, always greet the patient by his first or last name. It has a magical effect on gaining their trust. The patients remember their doctors but the doctor remembering the patient is a very big deal. This is especially true for those practicing in busy referral institutes in metropolitan cities. Whenever I addressed them by their name, I saw them getting visibly relaxed. Even If they had been waiting long hours for their turn, frowns on their face simply melted away as I called them by their name. Mind how you address your patients: Old people are extremely sensitive to how they are addressed. They may not like to be addressed “Mother”, “uncle” or “aunty”. I learnt it the hard way when I addressed a middle-aged lady Mata Ji (mother) and she brusquely told me that she was younger than me. Learn communication skills: You may greet the patients as they come in, but always ask the patient and the accompanying person to sit b

    Prof. Amod Gupta
  4. 11 May 2021 8 min read

    Seven Points You Should Know about Mucormycosis

    What is Mucormycosis? Mucormycosis is a fungus that is ubiquitous. This organism is present in the soil and all around us and is also a commensal that is present in the nose and oropharynx. It is an opportunistic organism – this means that it invades and causes infection only when the host’s immune system is compromised. A normal healthy person’s immune system would easily be able to fight a fungal infection like mucormycosis. It invades the nose and the paranasal sinuses. It then gradually spreads to the neighboring structures which is the orbit-it then affects the extraocular muscles, the optic nerve and the orbital apex beyond which it then spreads intracranially involving the cavernous sinus, the leptomeninges, and the brain. This form of invasive mucormycosis which is the commonest clinical manifestation is called Rhino-Orbital-Cerebral Mucormycosis (ROCM). Why are we seeing so much of it now? Typically one would come across fewer than a handful of cases of mucormycosis in an enti

    Dr. Akshay Gopinathan Nair
  5. 8 May 2021 6 min read

    Smartphone Gonio-imaging: The Truly Frugal Indian Revolution

    Introduction: Gonioscopy is the evaluation of the angle of the anterior chamber, a term coined by Alexios Tarantas.[1] It is one of the three important components to diagnose and classify glaucoma, the visual field changes and the optic nerve head evaluation being the other two. This clinical skill which should be performed on each patient visiting the clinic for the first time is not performed as much as it should be, the deficit fuelled by the enigma of it being one of the most difficult skills to be acquired in any clinical evaluation. Dr Wallace Alward, a doyen in the field of gonioscopy had recently delivered a talk which was titled “Gonioscopy: Still a State of Art after 100 years”.[2] This title beautifully sums up the gap between the demand and its supply. This deficit does not seem to be fulfilled in near future by the conventional examination techniques. So, the field of ophthalmology needs to move to a method that is frugal, easily operable, reproducible, and should hold val

    Dr. Nilesh Kumar
  6. 28 Apr 2021 5 min read

    Balancing Clinical and Research Work

    How does one balance between clinical and research work? This is an often-repeated question-probably because the answer is never clear. The fulcrum of the balance is not the same for everyone. Let us pause for a while and try to define certain things to bring clarity. What is clinical work? This is perhaps best defined as the time and effort involved in direct care of patients. Obviously, it also involves the time spent on organising the system that permits the above activity to take place smoothly. What constitutes research work? Technically research involves trying to find answers to the unknown or partially known. This should mean trying to understand the etiopathology of diseases which are poorly understood and finding new ways of managing them better. Broadly clinicians can be involved in clinical research, basic research or both. Clinical research can be prospective research such as observational studies, clinical trials, epidemiological studies etc but could also be retrospectiv

    Dr. Lingam Gopal
  7. 2 Apr 2021 5 min read

    Trivia

    Do you Know !! The eye muscles are the most active muscles in the whole body. The external muscles that move ht eyes are the strongest muscles in the human body for the job that they have to do. They are 100 times powerful than they need to be. Eyes are composed of more than two million working parts. The eye can process 36,000 bits of information every hour. A normal lifespan will bring you almost 24 million of images of the world around you. Eyes can instantaneously set in motion hundreds of muscles & organs in our body. A blink of an eye lasts about one-tenth of a second. The average persons blink their eyes about 11,500 times per day and about 4.2 million times per year. Dacryphilia is the arousal from seeing tears in the eyes of a partner. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you away from crying. Men can read smaller print than women, women can hear well. You can’t sneeze with your eyes open (you can try it!!) Everyone is colour blind at birth. The eye is the only part of t

    Dr. Parthopratim Dutta Majumder
  8. 2 Apr 2021 10 min read

    Scientific Writing: Common Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them

    The preceding chapters have given us a fair idea of how to go about writing an original manuscript for publication: the why, the what, and the how of manuscript writing. We have been primed with inspiration, research tools, and the nitty-gritty of techniques to carve out an original contribution to science from the banalities of repetitious clinical routines. But before we jump headlong into the unforgiving cauldron of publishing research, let us trim our intellectual exuberance with the reality check of the roadblocks, ruts, and pitfalls on the way to the crowning glory of our maiden publication. This wisdom is necessary so that we may avoid some common booby traps in manuscript writing, and learn to both avoid and handle the inevitable and repetitive failures, which should not snuff out our spark at the first setback. BEFORE WE WRITE: the first hiccups The writer’s block hits the prospective authors right at the starting block: how to generate a new idea for research? A few starting

    Dr. Dhananjay Shukla
  9. 2 Apr 2021 7 min read

    Vernal Keratoconjunctivitis - FIVE Important Points We Should Know

    Allergic conjunctivitis, which includes a spectrum of clinical entities is one of the most common conditions with which patients present to a general ophthalmologist. They include milder forms like seasonal and perennial allergic conjunctivitis as well as severe forms like vernal and atopic which can be sight-threatening. In spite of common clinical and immunological features vernal keratoconjunctivitis differs from the rest in myriad ways. (1)This article brings forth five most pertinent points which will not only improve the understanding but also help identify and manage it. 1. Vernal keratoconjunctivitis can have three distinct forms Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) is a bilateral, chronic, usually seasonal, recurrent allergic inflammation of the conjunctiva. It mainly affects boys living in tropical countries in their first or second decade of life, mostly seasonal but in tropical countries, it can be perennial too. In the temperate regions, in many parts of Africa, Latin America

    Dr. Shweta Agarwal · Dr. Bhaskar Srinivasan · +1 other
  10. 2 Apr 2021 21 min read

    A Practical Guide to Data Analysis

    One of the important components of your thesis is analyzing your data. This can range from a few percentages as in a small descriptive study to a more detailed analysis. While collecting data for your thesis it is important to give some thought to what the important parameters that you would want to study are. Make sure that you collect adequate information about these parameters and that you enter the information in a way that it can be analyzed. Doing basic analysis using MS Excel and a few online resources is not difficult for anyone who is a little familiar with using a computer. You do not have to be an expert to do this. This chapter aims to guide you through the steps of identifying the type of data you are working with, guiding you through different common statistical techniques on MS Excel and introducing you to a few online resources. With these basic skills, you will be able to do most of your data analysis on your own. Now that you have finished entering your data completel

    Dr. Ronnie George