The findings provide the current frequency and distribution of eyelid BCCs in England, highlighting opportunities for health education and improving reporting and registration of events, and for informing service planning.

Structured and supervised VR training can offer a significant level of skills transfer to novice ophthalmic surgeons. VR training at the earliest stage of ophthalmic surgical training may, therefore, be of benefit.

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Visual acuity is the most commonly used test to assess visual function. The Snellen chart is the universally accepted tool for testing visual acuity despite its poor reliability and reproducibility. Newer logMAR charts are now available that have negated the disadvantages of the Snellen chart. However, these charts are not being used regularly in daily practice. This article discusses the reasons for the delayed acceptance of the logMAR chart.

Purpose To evaluate the variability of performance among novice ophthalmic trainees in a range of repeated tasks using the Eyesi virtual reality (VR) simulator. Methods Eighteen subjects undertook three attempts of five cataract specific and generic three-dimensional tasks: continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis, cracking and chopping, cataract navigation, bimanual cataract training, anti-tremor. Scores for each attempt were out of a maximum of 100 points. A non-parametric test was used to analyse the data, where a P-value of o0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Highly significant differences were found between the scores achieved in the first attempt and that during the second (Po0.0001) and third (Po0.0001) but not between the second and third attempt (P ¼ 0.65). There was no significant variability in the overall score between the users (P ¼ 0.1104) or in the difference between their highest and lowest score (P ¼ 0.3878). Highly significant differences between tasks were shown both in the overall score (P ¼ 0.0001) and in the difference between highest and lowest score (P ¼ 0.003). Conclusion This study, which is the first to quantify reproducibility of performance in entry level trainees using a VR tool, demonstrated significant intra-novice variability. The cohort of subjects performed equally overall in the range of tasks (no inter-novice variability) but each showed that performance varies significantly with the complexity of the task when using this high-fidelity instrument.