Contact lens
fungus damages Brit woman’s eye
A 42-year-old British woman has claimed her left eye was
damaged by a fungus after she wore disposable contact lenses for a day.
Jacqueline Stone, a maths teaching assistant from Essex, spent 17 weeks in
hospital after wearing the lenses, The Sun reported. The woman had bought the
‘all-day comfort’ lenses online.
‘They felt uncomfortable all day. When I took them out, the
left one had stuck to my eye,’ she told the daily. She said her vision became
blurred and she was given drops by her doctor. ‘A white pocket of pus started
forming over my pupil and eventually burst, splitting my eyeball,’ she said.
‘I was screaming. I was given morphine, but it didn’t touch
the pain. I’ve given birth twice but nothing compares to that. I could feel the
bug eating through my eye.’ She went to a Cambridge hospital, where she was
diagnosed with an infection caused by the Fusarium fungus. It had eaten through
three layers of her eye and 70 nerves.
After 22 surgeries, surgeons were forced to remove her eye.
The woman is now suing two local hospitals and the contact lens company. The
Fusarium fungus affects the cornea – the front part of the eye – and can cause
blindness. Symptoms include blurred vision, discharge, swelling, tears, pain
and sensitivity to light.
02.02.2013
Onko-sure
– a blood test to screen 13 types of cancers
Onko-sure,
a minimally invasive single blood test, screens 13 different types of cancers
at the earliest stage of the disease, a health expert said on Friday.
‘One
of the recent advances in the field of cancer screening is onko-sure which can
screen as many as 13 different types of cancers including lung, colon, rectum,
ovary, liver … and other cancers,’ B.R. Das, president (research and
innovation) of SRL Diagnostics said in a statement. ‘Every person should take
onko-sure minimal invasive test once a year,’ he added.
He
said there were a multitude of radiological and pathological tests for cancer
diagnosis but few cancer tests for the screening of various types of cancers.
‘The test indicates the presence of protein fragments called FDPs (Fibrinogen
Degradation Products), which occur when cancer cells break down their
surroundings to facilitate cancer growth. ‘It is a simple test, as the patient
has to just give a blood sample and one test costs Rs.2,400,’ Das said.
Cancer
is the unregulated growth of cells in the body leading to a plethora of
symptoms. These cancerous cells invade various organs. ‘About seventy percent
of cancers in India are diagnosed in advanced stages leading to very poor
outcomes and very high mortality — accounting for about 9 percent of all deaths
in India. It definitely raises an alarm for a proactive approach towards cancer
diagnosis,’ Das said.
According
to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 5 lakh deaths in India are
attributed to various kinds of cancers annually. According to the ministry of
health, there are 28 lakh cases of cancer at any given point of time in India
and 10 lakh new cases are reported every year. The chances of getting the
disease are increased by multiple factors like use of tobacco, viral and
bacterial infections, exposure to radiations, pollutants and many a times due
to faulty genes which may be hereditary.
02.02.2013
Without a rich heart, wealth is
an ugly beggar
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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