Eye nurse labours for top award (From The Bolton News)

Eye nurse labours for top award

A TREATMENT best known for reducing labour pains is being used in Bolton to help patients undergoing eye treatment.

And the revolutionary use of "gas and air" could win a Bolton nurse a top award.

Two years ago staff nurse Andrew Hollinghurst became concerned when he noticed patients with an eye condition which can lead to blindness, were not turning up for treatment because it was too painful.

Patients at the Royal Bolton Hospital suffering from proliferative diabetic retinopathy, which affects about 20 per cent of insulin dependent diabetics, were treated using an argon laser.

In many cases, this causes pain and discomfort because of the high energy electrons produced during treatment - which can burn the surface of the eye.

Andrew, who lives in Horwich, explained: "What the treatment actually does is to stop sight deteriorating still further. It doesn't improve it but it does prevent it getting worse."

Despite the success of the treatment, however, some patients were not turning up for follow up appointments.

Under the regime, an initial treatment is followed up by six subsequent treatments.

"I heard via the Diabetes Centre that patients simply couldn't face any more treatments after the first or second ones," added Andrew.

This then led to Andrew and his former colleague Cliff Richardson setting up a study to see how, with the pain relief treatments around, they could ease these patients' plights.

And it was while Andrew was investigating the alternatives that he chanced upon the use of Equinox - the gas and air mix often given to women during labour.

Patients have control of their own treatment. They are given a handset with a small mouthpiece which they can use when the pain reaches a peak.

In the two years since the gas and air was introduced on to the unit, there has been a reduction in the amount of pain patients experience. Their anxiety is reduced too.

Staff at the opthalmic unit have also noticed more patients completing their treatment programme and reporting no side effects.

Now Andrew's study has been short-listed for a Nursing Times 3M award for research and innovation in which Andrew stands to win a cash prize of £1,000.

Already word of his work and success is being spread in hospitals across the country and a hospital in Jerusalem has introduced the system too.

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