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Amazing surgical cases at the OPL event at the WOC
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The Ophthalmic Premier League |
The World Ophthalmology Congress in Berlin has just finished, and the highlight of the meeting for me was the Ophthalmic Premier League (OPL) event organized by Amar Agarwal, MS, FRCS, FRCOphth. The surgical cases shown were simply amazing.
The idea behind the OPL is to have four teams compete to show their best, favorite, most amazing and most useful cases in an effort to win votes from the judges in order to win the Eye Cup. While not quite as big as the upcoming soccer World Cup, it was a big event at the WOC.
Mohan Rajan, MD, showed a series of intraocular foreign bodies, some of which were huge, including a case with a retained 20-mm piece of plant matter. In addition to being the largest intraocular foreign body that I've heard of, the case was notable because the initial doctor primarily repaired the corneal entrance wound just after the trauma and completely missed the large retained foreign body. The patient then presented to Dr. Rajan when he developed a white cataract and endophthalmitis had begun. Amazingly, the patient recovered 20/200 vision. Although Dr. Rajan was on my competitor's team and not mine, I cheered for him.
Another truly amazing case was shown by my team member Athiya Agarwal, MD, DO. Her case involved a young child with a severe anterior segment staphyloma who underwent an anterior segment transplantation and placement of an artificial iris and IOL. The result looked amazing, although I'm not sure about the visual recovery or the long-term outcome.
A technique that was shown by many surgeons was the intrascleral glued IOL technique developed by Dr. Amar Agarwal and Gabor Scharioth, MD. This technique may surpass scleral-sutured IOL fixation as the method of choice in challenging situations.
My case was simple but very useful: a technique for IOL exchange and suture repair of an iris defect. I thought that my relatively common case would balance out well with the unusual cases of my team members.
In the end, a four-way tie was declared, and all surgeons were declared winners. But the true winners were the patients who received such amazing surgery.
See Dr. Devgan share more expert insight live at OSN New York 2010, to be held November 19-21, 2010 at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers. Learn more at OSNNY.com.