EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
Issue link: https://digital.eyeworld.org/i/511377
71 May 2015 EW MEETING REPORTER Mahipal Sachdev, MD, New Delhi, India, Richard Packard, MD, Lon- don, George Beiko, MD, Ontario, Canada, and Ravindran Ravilla, MD, Madurai, India. Finally, the Bursting Buccaneers team consisted of Chitra Ramamurthy, MD, Bangalore, India (filling in for Jorge Alio, MD, Alicante, Spain), Boris Malyugin, MD, Moscow, Arup Chakrabarti, MD, Trivan- drum, India, and Sri Ganesh, MD, Bangalore, India. Dr. Tabin highlighted a case where he experienced complications when using a power chop technique. A lot of ophthalmology requires skill and technique, but sometimes you just need a little more power, he said. This is useful when you have a particularly hard cataract. Dr. Tabin did routine phaco in his case, but the cornea began to get dry, and he asked his resident to put water on the cornea. At this point in the case, he had already done a full power chop and chopped down to the retina. Unfortunately, the resident lost her balance and hit Dr. Tabin's hand with the chopper. The first thing to remember, he said, is to remain calm. However, he lost the last nuclear fragments and the posterior capsule was open. You want to put viscoelastic into the anterior chamber to make sure there's not more prolapse of the vitreous, he said. Following this, Dr. Tabin proceeded to do a bimanual vitrectomy. The power chop had been completed, and there was still a good anterior capsulorhexis, so he proceeded with the bimanual vitrectomy. Dr. Ramamurthy described a case she handled with a 32-year-old patient with a post traumatic sub- luxated cataract. She decided to use a femtosecond laser. "Femto cataract surgery is the definite way when you want that pristine capsulorhexis," Dr. Ramamurthy said. Other topics discussed included YAG laser capsulotomy, traumat- ic cataracts, capsular fibrosis, and refractive lensectomy. Dr. Chee won for "Best Video," while Dr. Beiko won "Best Entertain- er." The Bursting Buccaneers, who had dressed as the "Pirates of the Caribbean," won for "Best Team." Jose Rizal Medal Lecturer: 'Glass no longer empty' Among the medal lectures that the APAO awards its most outstanding members, the Jose Rizal medal, said Dennis Lam, MD, Hong Kong, incoming president of APAO, is "the most important one." The honor of delivering this year's Jose Rizal Medal Lecture went to Hugh Taylor, MD, Australia, cur- rent president of the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO). In his Jose Rizal Medal Lecture, "The Global Issue of Vision Loss and What We Can Do About It," Dr. Taylor reviewed the current state of global blindness, particularly in light of the Vision 2020 initiative. Going back a few years to 1994, Dr. Taylor said that 60% of global blindness was caused by cataracts and refractive errors; 15% was caused by conditions like trachoma, vitamin A deficienc , and oncho- cerciasis—conditions that needed to be addressed as public health issues more than strictly ophthalmological issues; 15% was caused by diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma—at the time considered more medical/oph- thalmological, treated case to case rather than as public health issues; and 10% by age-related macular degeneration and other diseases that, at the time, no one could do anything about. Moving forward to 1996, the 30–50 million blind in the 90s was projected to double to 90 million by 2020. By the end of the decade, the World Health Organization would should also spur the ophthalmic community to continue the struggle. "The glass isn't full yet," Dr. Taylor said. "But it's no longer empty." Building education in ophthalmology a major focus for Asian countries In a session on building educational programs, Mark Tso, MD, Baltimore, who introduced the session, high- lighted critical building blocks of major eye centers. Some of the pri- mary aspects of this are focusing on the delivery of quality general and specialty eye services, biomedical research discovery, and education. Education is the backbone of clinical service, the foundation of clinical and basic research, and the core value of the faculty, Dr. Tso said. "Furthermore, education builds people, and people go on to make history." That's why education is critical in the building of a major eye care center, he said. launch the Vision 2020 initiative, which aimed to develop sustainable programs with the goal of eliminat- ing avoidable blindness by 2020. Vision 2020, Dr. Taylor said, "is all about partnerships"—among the ophthalmic community, represented by individuals and larger regional and international societies, non-gov- ernment organizations, and the governments of the world. It has 3 main components: effective disease control, human resource development, and infra- structure development. Back in 1996, it was projected that "if we did what we knew," Dr. Taylor said, the 60 million blind projected for 2010 without any intervention would be reduced to 40 million; by 2020, the projected 90 million would be reduced to 25 million. So where are we now? Actual- ly, Dr. Taylor said, "doing what we knew to do," there were only 32.4 million blind from avoidable causes globally in 2010. That's a drop of 42%. While these results clearly show there's room for optimism, they View videos from Wednesday at APAO 2015: EWrePlay.org Amar Agarwal, MD, Chennai, India, describes the "turn around technique" to overcome false channel dissection during intrastromal corneal ring placement. continued on page 72