Shade Attached to Spectacle Frame to Protect from Glare in Early or Premature Cataract.

A MODIFICATION of Gillies's plastic needle holder for ophthalmic use was described by the author 17 years ago (Foster, 1938). This consisted in a reduction in size of the handle and scissors-shank of Gillies's instrument, and the replacement of the curved jaws intended to hold needles for intradermal suturing by the jaws of a Quarry Silcock needle holder of average size. The instrument had all the great advantages of Gillies's instrument for the forceps tie-knot, though the scissor blades could only be used when cutting sutures in the lids on the temporal side of the eye, owing to limitations of space. With the development of corneo-corneal suturing in cataract extraction, and the corneal grafting made possible by the Bindehautnadel nach Professor Vogt (usually known in England by the Grieshaber catalogue designations 81/7 and 8 1/10) and the fil de suture corneenne de Marcel Kalt (usually referred to here as Kalt's silk, though it is in fact Sea Island cotton), it became obvious that the jaws were too big to control these tiny round needles and that the serrations on the jaws at times failed to maintain a grip on the fine threads when seized parallel to them. To correct this, the jaws have -how been reduced to a little below the size of the smallest Quarry Silcock needle holder obtainable as a pattern (about half the size of the 1938 model), and the rest of the instrument has been diminished in proportion. The length is now 4j", whereas the design of 1938 was 5" long (Figure).