Eyeworld

46 | EYEWORLD | SPRING 2025 ASCRS NEWS T his year, the Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, Lecture will be given by Reza Dana, MD, during the Main Stage session on Sunday, April 27, at the ASCRS Annual Meeting. The Lindstrom Lecture was established in 2021 to recognize the exceptional contributions made by Dr. Lindstrom to ASCRS and ophthalmology, and honors individuals who have made significant contributions to anterior segment surgery. Dr. Dana said the lecture will focus on his research in the field of cornea, stressing the expanding applications of corneal health in cat- aract and refractive surgery outcomes. Most of refractive surgery is application of surgical techniques of the cornea, Dr. Dana said. "For a long time, only the structural aspects of the cornea were thought about by refractive sur- geons," he said. Starting around 20 years ago, he said it became obvious that the health of the corneal tissue—whether it's dry or inflamed or if there's nerve damage—can have an influence on the outcomes of corneal and refractive sur- gery. That changed the themes that were being ASCRS ANNUAL MEETING PREVIEW About the physician Damien Gatinel, MD, PhD Head of the Anterior and Refractive Surgery Department Rothschild Foundation Paris, France by Ellen Stodola Editorial Co-Director Preview of the Charles D. Kelman, MD, Innovator's Lecture stimulating deep dive into ablation profiles, trifocal IOL design, IOL power calculations, and keratoconus detection." Dr. Gatinel said he has long been fascinated by engineering, and when he chose to pursue medicine, he quickly realized that ophthalmolo- gy was the perfect field to merge his passion for physics, optics, and laser research. The unique interplay between mathematics and vision cor- rection make it an ideal avenue for him to apply T he Charles D. Kel- man, MD, Innova- tor's Lecture will be given by Damien Gatinel, MD, PhD, during the Saturday Main Stage session at the 2025 ASCRS Annual Meeting. Both honored and pleasantly surprised by this distinction, Dr. Gatinel said he sees it as a meaningful recognition of his contributions to mathematical and optical modeling in ophthal- mology. His lecture will be "an intellectually continued on page 48 About the physician Reza Dana, MD C.H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology Harvard Medical School Senior Scientist and Director of Cornea Massachusetts Eye and Ear Boston, Massachusetts by Ellen Stodola Editorial Co-Director Preview of the Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, Lecture discussed, he said, adding that a lot of topics covered today, especially at the ASCRS Annual Meeting, focus on corneal health, corneal physi- ology, and corneal regenerative medicine. "The topics have become blended much more than they were before," he said. "ASCRS has been at the forefront of emphasizing the need for optimizing corneal health for the best outcomes of refractive and cataract surgery." Dr. Dana has authored nearly 500 papers in the field of cornea over the years, and he said one area he'd like to cover in his lecture is the role of corneal nerves in the maintenance of health. "I'll be talking about the interaction between nerves, the immune system, and the epithelial cells, and how approaching one can impact the others," he said. This is an area that Dr. Dana thinks is at the forefront of corneal research, linking what used to be thought of as disparate areas of biology: the stroma vs. the endothelium vs. the surface. "Now we're under- standing that all of them are linked in a very intimate way, and you cannot approach one without thinking of the other." Contact Dana: Reza_Dana@meei.harvard.edu

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