Cataract
March 2021

by Rosa Braga-Mele, MD
Cataract Editor

When it came time to write a piece for the March issue of EyeWorld, I thought, “What should I write about?” Then I realized this issue will mark 1 year since COVID-19 hit the North American news and turned our worlds sideways.

It has been a whole year of learning how to adapt and acclimatize to a “new” way of living life and providing medicine. Whether this will be the new normal moving forward or not, I can’t predict, but I think a lot of positive has come along with the negative, especially for us as ophthalmologists. We have made our practice safer with good hygiene and shields at slit lamps and lasers that will better protect us moving forward. Telemedicine has helped us be able to take the time to review things with our patients in a more in-depth and perhaps timelier manner.

Learning and innovation has not stopped. Online learning and mentorship continue. As evident in this issue, innovation in IOL and phaco technology has continued and is highlighted. Perhaps COVID-19 has helped us look at how to best and most efficiently perform surgery to optimize patient outcomes and minimize patient risks. In this section we look at immediately sequential bilateral cataract surgery and whether now is the time to transition. We also have kept up to date on new techniques in cataract surgery to help outcomes in the face of other comorbidities.

I hope all of you are doing well during these challenging times. Hopefully, we will see all of this turn around once vaccinations have been performed on most of the population. But until then, let’s keep learning from each other and supporting each other.