Health related quality of life and the support needs of carers of cardiac surgical patients: an exploratory study.

In this descriptive, repeated-measures study, we assessed changes in Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) of cardiac surgical patients' caregivers over time and their need for support. Ninety-six primary carers of cardiac patients who had received elective surgery at one tertiary referral hospital were recruited. The majority were female spouses of patients who had undergone bypass and/or cardiac valve surgery.

Glaucoma medication ignored in general medical and surgical patients.

Objectives: To quantify the risk glaucoma patients are at, having their eye treatment omitted on admission to non-ophthalmic wards at a tertiary referral centre.

Design: A criterion audit surveying all adult inpatients on 13 wards at a tertiary referral centre on two separate dates to reduce convenient sample bias.

Setting: A tertiary referral centre in the West Midlands of England.

Rapidly progressing bilateral cataracts in a patient with beta thalassemia and pellagra.

Soon after the diagnosis of pellagra in a 20-year-old patient with beta thalassemia, bilateral intumescent cataracts rapidly developed. We believe the patient's crystalline lenses were at an increased oxidative state due to iron overload from the thalassemia. Depletion of the lens epithelial cells of an important antioxidative agent (glutathione) as a result of niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency due to pellagra reduced the antioxidative capacity of the lenses.