Inflammation

We have come to the third and final installment in our spontaneous series about outer retinal anomalies found on OCT: focal choroidal excavations.

KOLOA, Hawaii — At Hawaiian Eye 2020, John A. Hovanesian, MD, clinical instructor at the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute, gives his presentation on the latest steroid delivery options that allow patients to avoid drops after cataract surgery for the treatment of inflammation.

ATLANTA – A discussion with patients about their current dietary habits and nutritional supplementation can help the optometrist customize a dry eye treatment plan, according to a speaker here at SECO.

The cover story in this issue of Ocular Surgery News focuses on noninfectious uveitis and new treatments that help control inflammation. Some of them, like Yutiq from EyePoint Pharmaceuticals and Ozurdex from Allergan, deliver anti-inflammatories inside the eye — an appealing approach because of the slow release of drug and the elimination of compliance issues. But of course, eye drops are used to treat most conditions in our specialty, and we know patients consistently fail to take them well. This is a bigger problem than most of us would like to acknowledge, yet few of us make the effort to educate patients on how to take drops. We would all be better doctors if we did.

Cosmetic iris implants are non-FDA-approved procedures that can result in severe, potentially blinding complications.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — JAK inhibitors are being studied to treat patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis, with many showing promising outcomes, according to a presenter at South Beach Symposium.

Among patients with ACS, periprocedural loading doses of atorvastatin before planned PCI did not reduce MACE at 12 months compared with placebo, according to new data from the SECURE-PCI trial.

In the quest to reduce atherosclerotic CVD, statin therapy has emerged as the gold standard pharmacotherapy.

By watching my three children playing together, I’ve learned that the importance of pain depends on whether you’re the one giving it or the one receiving it. Similarly, the size of the burden of using eye drops depends on whether you’re the one prescribing them or taking them. We physicians have grown accustomed to prescribing three eye drop medications to be taken for a month or longer after surgery, assuming that the average cataract patient — age 69 — will take them flawlessly. How wrong we are! Studies by Angela An and others have shown that more than 90% of patients taking eye drops fail. If we listen, our own patients tell us about their problems with compliance; in a 2018 study by MDbackline asking patients what was their biggest complaint about cataract surgery, 10% brought up the subject of eye drops as a consistently formidable task.

The Bascom Palmer Angiogenesis meeting took place on Feb. 8, covering disease pathogenesis and emerging treatment options for various retinal conditions. The presentations highlighted how some of the newest imaging modalities are helping us understand the natural course of disease and new mechanisms of action being evaluated as alternatives to our current treatments. Below is just a mere highlight of many excellent presentations at the meeting.