Do you know the difference between disk and disc? What about vision and visual acuity? Or conjunctival hyperemia and conjunctival injection? That’s right, this month we’re talking about ophthalmology!
The AMA Manual of Style has an informative section on ophthalmology terms (§15.13). The section defines terms commonly used in radiology literature and offers instruction on how to use these terms correctly. Some of the terms addressed in the section are fovea, macula, lid, and orbit, as well as several acuity terms.
See if you can identify the problem(s) in the following sentence from this month’s quiz:
At initial presentation, her best-corrected visual acuity was 20/30 in each eye. Five weeks later, while taking 40 mg of prednisone, she reported no improvement in her vision, and her best-corrected visual acuity remained at 20/30 OU.
Highlight for the answer:
At initial presentation, her best-corrected visual acuity was 20/30 OU. Five weeks later, while taking 40 mg of prednisone, she reported no improvement in her vision, and her best-corrected visual acuity remained at 20/30 OU.
The abbreviations OD (right eye), OS (left eye), and OU (each eye) may be used without expansion only with numbers, eg, 20/25 OU, or descriptive assessments of acuity. Note that OU does not mean both eyes, although it is often used incorrectly to imply a vision measurement (eg, visual acuity or visual field) with both eyes at the same time (§15.13, Ophthalmology Terms, pp 736-739 in print).
That’s just a glimpse of what we have to offer in this month’s quiz on ophthalmology terms. If you’re a subscriber, check out the complete quiz at www.amamanualofstyle.com.—Laura King, MA, ELS
In this example, the hyphen in “best-corrected” appears wrong to me, although it seems to be standard usage. Could you not interpret the phrase as the best visual acuity after correction, with “best” qualifying “visual acuity,” so no hyphen?
I don’t understand the visual acuity problem. If it means each eye, the only question is a lack of parallelism.