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Background: Through an Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) initiative to tackle excessive hospital outpatient waiting times, 996 patients referred to the Ophthalmology Outpatient Department (OPD) of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH), Eccles Street, Dublin 7, Ireland, were outsourced to a community medical eye clinic (CMEC) for consultation with specialist-registered ophthalmologists., Aims: The study aims to determine if patients referred as routine to the OPD department could be managed in a community setting., Methods: 996 patients were reviewed in the CMEC, and their data was collected and placed into a spreadsheet for analysis., Results: 61.2% of patients referred to the OPD were fully managed in the community clinic, and 34.9% required ophthalmic surgery in hospital., Conclusions: By facilitating direct listing of some of the surgical patients to the hospital theatre list, 89.8% of the 996 referrals received treatment without needing to attend the hospital outpatients department.

We present four cases of acute blurred vision that presented to the Ophthalmology Emergency Department of University Hospital Waterford. All four patients were found to have a spontaneous hyphaema with neither neovascular cause nor traumatic history. The pathophysiology was initially uncertain. On closer investigation, these patients were found to have rare iris microhaemangiomas (IMs) or Cobb's haemangiomas. They were all treated conservatively and made full recoveries. Though some reports recommend treating IM prior to intraocular surgery, one of these patients proceeded to have uncomplicated cataract surgery at a later date with no need for prior intervention., (2016 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.)