Desferrioxamine is used for the treatment of chronic iron overload, acute iron poisoning, and certain anaemias. Ocular toxicity secondary to prolonged treatment with desferrioxamine may result in night blindness, visual field constriction, cataract, pigmentary retinopathy and optic neuropathy. To avoid such complications an ophthalmic screening has been suggested for patients taking desferrioxamine. We report an 81-year-old patient who developed irreversible ocular toxicity despite undergoing ophthalmic screening.
Purpose To assess the potential of bacterial transmission using felt-tipped marker pens on forehead skin before cataract surgery. Methods A total of 64 marker pens taken from clinical stock were tested. Forty-eight new pens were cultured in the laboratory. They were first left to desiccate for 0, 4, and 16 h, then dipped into solutions of 0.5 Macfarlane's concentration of coagulase negative staphylococci (CNS), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and coliforms, and transferred onto the culture medium after 5, 10, 30, and 120 min intervals of exposure to air. A further 16 pens were collected after routine clinical use for 5 working days and cultured. Results Positive cultures were observed in 100% of pens at 0 min, and 44.4% at 5 min after the organism was exposed to air. Escherichia coli showed least transmissibility with no growth in all plates after 5 min of exposure. Only MRSA showed heavy growth after 10 min of exposure. No pattern emerged with reference to the length of time; each pen was left to desiccate. No growth was observed in the cultures of all 16 marking pens after clinical use. Conclusions The potential for transmission of bacteria through felt-tipped marker pens has not been explored in cataract surgery. This study demonstrated that a theoretical risk of transmission exists in a laboratory setting, and survival times of the bacteria decreased with time. This suggests that the interval in which patients are marked with the same pen may play a role in bacterial transmission.
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