Eyeworld

48 | EYEWORLD | APRIL 2022 Contact Price: francisprice@pricevisiongroup.net by Liz Hillman Editorial Co-Director About the physician Francis Price Jr., MD Price Vision Group Indianapolis, Indiana that they had tried contacts but discontinued use because of dry eyes. Thus, we identified a group in which we need to be more aggressive in treating dry eyes before and after LASIK." In his Innovator's Lecture, "Improving Patient Care Through Tracking Outcomes," Dr. Price said he is going to talk about the impor- tance of tracking results if you're doing some- thing new so you can confirm if it really works and improve upon it. "I'm not the great inventor that Dr. Kelman was, but I think everyone in ASCRS is an inno- vator. ASCRS was founded to promote advances in lens implants and refractive surgery. It's hard to believe now, but when I did my training, many of the training programs frowned upon phacoemulsification, lens implants, and refrac- tive surgery. I think ASCRS attracts people who want to be innovators and who enjoy it. "The key to innovation and what Dr. Kelman did, and what I try to do, is to keep trying to find better ways to deliver care to our patients," he said. Dr. Price will also offer some history on how regulations on research and new technologies were different in earlier years—for better and for worse. "It was a lot wilder when I started practice," he said. In addition to his private practice and work with the Cornea Research Foundation of Ameri- ca, Dr. Price serves as president and co-founder of the Medical Practice Consortium, a health insurance plan for group medical practices in Indiana. He has been recognized with other awards and achievements throughout his career, has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and was the principal investigator on more than 130 clinical studies for ophthalmic devices, medications, and surgical techniques. The Innovators General Session will feature several other presentations on the latest innova- tions in ophthalmology followed by discussion and a panel that will include Reay Brown, MD, Nicole Fram, MD, Sumitra Khandelwal, MD, and Terry Kim, MD, moderated by Edward Holland, MD. ANNUAL MEETING PREVIEW ASCRS NEWS First look at the Innovator's Lecture F rancis Price Jr., MD, will deliver the Charles D. Kelman, MD, Innovator's Lecture during the Innovators General Session at the ASCRS Annual Meeting. Dr. Price is the founder and president of Price Vision Group and the Cornea Research Foundation of America. "My dad was a physician and he told me he felt sorry for me when I started because I'd missed the golden age of medicine. The regula- tory burden has greatly increased since his time, yet we've been blessed with amazing therapeu- tic advances that have transformed how we care for patients," he said, noting that he began private practice in 1982. In 1988, Dr. Price founded the Cornea Research Foundation of America to study corneal transplants. At the time, he said, no one was tracking long-term corneal transplant outcomes on a large scale in the U.S., even though it was the most common solid tissue transplant. The Foundation started a registry database for corneal transplants and began other clinical studies. "We published corneal transplant studies of more than 1,000 patients and looked at survival rates, factors associated with rejection, etc.," he said, adding that other studies evaluated an early excimer laser and whether topical steroids were needed with LASIK. Dr. Price said his practice was among the first to adopt endothelial keratoplasty and could see in surgical cases and by tracking outcomes that this procedure was superior to penetrating keratoplasty. Other research included prospec- tive studies comparing the safety and efficacy of different topical steroid dosing regimens to pre- vent transplant rejection. More recently, he led a multicenter study that compared patient-report- ed outcomes with LASIK vs. a control group of successful contact lens wearers. "We found that LASIK blew away contacts in terms of patient satisfaction, improvement in night vision, and reduction of dry eye symp- toms," Dr. Price said. "An interesting finding was that patients who relied on glasses before having LASIK were more likely to report dry eye problems afterward. We found that 75% of those who wore glasses preoperatively reported

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