Stories from My Years of Clinical Experience
The Patient Who Lost His Eyesight Suddenly
Hi, I am Dr. K. P. V. Rao, based in Navi Mumbai, India.
My clinical practice journey started way back in 1984.
I had just graduated in 1983 from a government medical college-Dr. Vaishampayan Memorial Medical College, Solapur, Maharashtra, India.
After finishing my internship in June 1983, I did a stint as a Resident Medical officer in the Chest and Tuberculosis department for one month and the Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgery department for six months in B Y L Nair Hospital, Mumbai Central.
During this period of transition from a student to being a full-fledged doctor, I have seen umpteen patients with various ailments that have prompted me to write this series of articles on my clinical experiences.
In April 1984, I moved to a newly formed city- Vashi, Navi Mumbai- and went into my own medical practice. Since then, I have attended to thousands of patients, some easy to treat and some difficult.
In this series of articles, I aim to narrate stories about some interesting cases that you will enjoy reading and, if someone can co-relate to the cases, know what to expect in the management of such a case.
Before we dig into these stories, I would like to narrate one very interesting story from my second year of MBBS about a patient who had suddenly “lost his eyesight”.
The Patient Who Lost His Eyesight Suddenly
In the year 1981, in my second year of MBBS, we students had to attend various clinical departments to get experience in these subjects.
In November 1981, on one such day, around 12:00 in the afternoon, we were attending an Ophthalmology clinic.
The OPD was full of many patients having eye issues. Suddenly, a middle-aged patient in his 50s was brought in by his relatives, who said that he suddenly went blind a few hours ago.
We all milled around the patient with our ophthalmic registrar. Some started asking questions as to how and when this happened, while our registrar examined his eyes with a torch. He ruled out cataracts and suggested ophthalmoscopy.
In the meantime, we were asked to check his blood pressure. We found it to be very high-230/140 mm of Hg. We reported it to our registrar and our professor of ophthalmology, who was taking our clinic that day.
He then examined the patient and told us that the cause of sudden blindness was his high BP, medically termed Malignant Hypertension, and the blindness was caused by retinal hemorrhage and/or retinal detachment. He suggested that the patient be admitted to ICCU of our hospital to bring his BP under control.
The key takeaways from this experience-
1. Always check your blood pressure after middle age, at least once a month. Your doctor may suggest treatment as per the severity of hypertension.
2. Never neglect your doctor’s advice on BP treatment. Very high BP can cause blindness, just like it causes stroke and heart attack.
3. Always remember- Prevention is Better than Cure.
Conclusions
I hope you have learned something from this small yet important experience of my pre-practice years.
I have stored this experience in my memory and have helped many patients with uncontrolled BP to achieve the target levels of 120/80 mm of Hg and prevent unwanted complications like blindness.
In my next article, I will touch upon many such clinical experiences one by one at a time so that you will learn to take timely action to prevent the likelihood of a certain catastrophe.
In the meantime, check out these few articles written by me earlier on health issues-
My sincere appreciation goes to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for allowing me to publish my stories in his publication Illumination-Curated [IC]. Dr. Mehmet Yildiz has written many stories on health issues that I thoroughly enjoy reading and learning from.
