Glaucoma
Spring 2024
by Manjool Shah, MD
Glaucoma Editor
Fifty years. Wow. As ASCRS celebrates its golden anniversary, I am struck by the journey our field has undergone. As a glaucoma specialist, the last decade alone has seen a revolution in how we even think about this disease, with the concept of “interventional glaucoma” becoming the watchword of a new paradigm in chronic disease management. However, as shiny and fun as our toys are, it is important to realize how much we stand on the “shoulders of giants” of the last half century.
“… With advancements in our field, old challenges often remain, while new diagnoses and dilemmas appear.”
In the 1970s, when ASCRS was in its primacy, glaucoma therapy was at the beginning of a revolution of sorts. While high risk, full thickness surgeries were still the norm, the novel trabeculectomy offered a safer solution by creating a guard to over filtration. Glaucoma surgery was safer than ever before. Furthermore, glaucoma stood at the beginning of a pharmacological revolution with the FDA approval of timolol, which radically improved tolerability and efficacy of medical glaucoma management. Over the next several decades, the themes of safer surgery and better drugs would lead to dramatic improvements in the lives of glaucoma patients and surgeons alike. Inching ever forward, progress continued to be made year after year, but old challenges never quite disappeared.
In this issue, we recognize a well-established fact of life for the clinician: with advancements in our field, old challenges often remain, while new diagnoses and dilemmas appear. Marlene Moster, MD, and Pradeep Ramulu, MD, discuss the longstanding bane of the glaucoma doc, normal tension glaucoma. Christina Weng, MD, and Emily Schehlein, MD, discuss a relatively newer type of glaucoma associated with intravitreal injections, a concept that never would have occurred to the glaucoma specialist 50 years ago. In both articles, we recognize the need to integrate the best of our past and the creativity of the future to take care of the patients of today. Also in this issue, Leon Herndon Jr., MD, Parag Parekh, MD, and Nathan Radcliffe, MD, discuss the importance of advocacy and recent efforts from ASCRS and other societies to score a big win for coverage of glaucoma surgery.
As I reflect on the journey our colleagues have undergone over the last five decades, I realize how important it is to have a venue that simultaneously serves as a repository of institutional memory while also incubating the next generation of knowledge. ASCRS’ upcoming Annual Meeting theme—“Inspired by History. Defining the Future.”—encapsulatesthis critical function that this society, this community, and all of you provide. I look forward to celebrating this golden milestone with all of you in Boston, and thank you for your continued contribution to the dialogue that has made this last half century an era of tremendous hope for the patients we serve.
