Diabetes patient thankful for sight-saving efforts of local consultant

A diabetes sufferer has thanked a consultant at Royal Bolton Hospital for saving his eyesight.
In 2010, Clive Worrall was diagnosed with a condition called diabetic macular oedema (DMO), an eye complication of diabetes that is one of the main causes of vision loss .
Mr Worrall, who has lived with type 2 diabetes for the past 20 years, said he failed to keep up with regular medical appointments during a period just after his divorce nine years ago.
His eyesight gradually deteriorated and he started needing glasses, but he assumed this was just due to ageing.
After returning to his original doctor following the death of his father, the 53-year-old “got back into the system” of regular health screening and it was during one of these routine check-ups at Royal Bolton Hospital where he learned his eyesight deterioration was due to the onset of DMO.
Mr Worrall was initially offered laser therapy, but his eyes failed to respond to the treatment . This is when he met ophthalmology consultant Simon Kelly, who made various attempts to get funding for the diabetic eye drug Lucentis, which at the time was not available on the NHS .
After being rebuffed by both the local primary care trust and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and failing to get Mr Worrall on to a drug trial in Manchester, Mr Kelly then decided to contact the drug’s manufacturer (Novartis) directly and apply for “compassionate access”.
They agreed and arranged for Mr Worrall to be administered the sight-saving injections . He now receives the injections at Royal Bolton Hospital every couple of months and has seen his sight improve significantly.
“Mr Kelly was really amazing, such a fighter. He never stopped trying for men, and he used to ring me in his own time as well to tell me where we were up to and what he planned to do next,” Mr Worrall said.
“Without Mr Kelly, my eyesight would have deteriorated by now and I certainly would not be able to work. My life would be completely different – I could easily have been blind,” he said.