PCON symposium day 3: vision correction, fluoroquinolones

NEW YORK – During the third and final day of the Primary Care Optometry News Symposium, presenters focused not only on fluoroquinolones, but primarily on vision correction -- from daily disposable contacts to wavefront-guided refractive surgery, as the modalities apply to children, adolescents, adults and presbyopes.

Wayne W. Wood, OD; Jennifer L. Smythe, OD, MS, FAAO; and Deepak Gupta, OD, FAAO, covered all applications of contact lenses including the most convenient modalities: daily disposables, Corneal Refractive Therapy (CRT by Paragon) and silicone hydrogels for extended wear.

During the refractive surgery portion, Dr. Catania described “the poor man’s aberrometer,” a technique practitioners can use in their offices to measure higher-order aberrations without having to purchase high-cost technology.

He also outlined the “claim to fame” of each of the FDA-approved wavefront laser platforms: Visx has its CustomVue technology, which creates a lens to show the patient how his or her wavefront correction would look; Alcon LADARVision has its registration process with “capture, match and treat” technology; and Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, added that the Bausch & Lomb Zyoptix platform has a larger data set, larger optical zone capabilities and larger treatment range.

“All three systems are good,” said Dr. Lindstrom.

Next year the symposium will be held here Nov. 19 to 21. See the December issue of Primary Care Optometry News for full coverage of this year’s meeting.