ASCRS News
Spring 2024

by Ellen Stodola
Editorial Co-Director

ASCRS Subspecialty Day on Friday, April 5, promises an exciting day of content on cornea, refractive, and glaucoma topics.

Glaucoma Day

Nathan Radcliffe, MD, and Manjool Shah, MD, serve as co-chairs of this year’s Glaucoma Day program.

“The 2024 Glaucoma Day program promises all of the electrifying and essential glaucoma educational topics that we have all come to love from this exciting day of glaucoma education,” said Nathan Radcliffe, MD.

The program will kick off with a joint session of ASCRS and the American Glaucoma Society (AGS). Other sessions will highlight glaukomtecken; medications, lasers, and lifestyle; and a spotlight on surgical glaucoma. The Stephen A. Obstbaum, MD, Honored Lecture, will be given by Leon Herndon Jr., MD, and the program will conclude with the popular “Complications and a Reay of Hope” video session. 

“True to form, we will cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in glaucoma, taking a look at the latest technology in diagnostics and therapeutics, our legendary (aka ‘bad’) glaucoma complications video symposium, and even touching on the ‘ugly’ but necessary topics such as glaucoma reimbursement,” Dr. Radcliffe said. “Come join us for a comprehensive and exciting day in glaucoma.”

Cornea Day

Francis Mah, MD, and Marjan Farid, MD, co-chair an exciting Cornea Day program. “Cornea Day 2024 is going to bring a nice mix of surgical/procedural corneal treatments and latest innovations, along with an update on latest medical treatment modalities for corneal disease,” Dr. Farid said. “We’re really focusing on updates and innovations.”

This year’s program will start off with complex cornea cases, infection and inflammation, as well as keratoconus and crosslinking (including what’s coming down the pipeline). This session will be moderated by W. Barry Lee, MD, and Naveen Rao, MD. 

The second session is all about anterior and posterior keratoplasty and will be moderated by Brandon Ayres, MD, and Julie Schallhorn, MD.  This session will include updates on surgical techniques as well as a look into disruptive innovations, including injectable endothelial cell therapy. 

An anterior segment and corneal surgical video session, moderated by Winston Chamberlain, MD, PhD, and Leela Raju, MD, will kick off the afternoon session. “We have complicated DMEKs, various IOL exchanges with vitreous prolapse in corneal pathology patients, DALK, and more,” Dr. Mah said. 

Finally, the program will conclude with a session on ocular surface disease, moderated by Sumit “Sam” Garg, MD, and Zachary Zavodni, MD. This will highlight updates in management of dry eye disease as well as surgical approaches for severe ocular surface and limbal stem cell disease.

“We really tried to gear it so that there is going to be a lot for the hardcore cornea specialist. There’s going to be something for them to pick up,” Dr. Mah said. “But we’ve also included things for the “cornea light” and some things that everyone should know to discuss with patients or know when to refer. It’s really something for everyone.”

Dr. Mah said that the program will include a variety of speakers, as well as topics. We try to keep things diverse and expose Cornea Day attendees to the latest in cornea research.  The speakers are excellent educators and will bring us up to date. Everyone will get a lot of value for attending Cornea Day, he said. 

But the cornea content isn’t over at the end of Cornea Day, Dr. Farid said. There will also be several cornea-focused symposia throughout the Annual Meeting on complications of corneal refractive surgery and how to manage, cornea surgery for the corneal surgeon (latest innovations and updates), and cornea from “A to Z” with a panel of expert corneal specialists talking about in-office management of various corneal diseases.

Refractive Day

This year’s Refractive Day will focus on understanding the patient’s lifelong refractive journey. Program chairs Daniel Chang, MD, Cathleen McCabe, MD, and Vance Thompson, MD, have likened this journey to a triathlon, where surgeons must prepare for the different stages of refractive surgery. 

“For me, one of the things I value the most in refractive surgery is approaching it in a comprehensive way,” Dr. Thompson said. 

“I’m particularly excited about this year because I think it’s the way we should really be thinking about our patients and their journey throughout their entire eye health history in many different aspects,” Dr. McCabe said. 

The idea, Dr. Chang said, is that vision correction needs progress throughout life, and as we’re planning any particular procedure, we should balance what is needed for that treatment while thinking about the bigger picture. “We should consider how the past affects the present, and how the present may affect the future.”

Refractive Day this year is going to focus on patients’ lifetime refractive journey from corneal refractive surgery and phakic IOLs to presbyopia treatments to refractive cataract surgery. When they’re a younger patient, Dr. McCabe said, they may want to become independent of their glasses and contact lenses and opt for things like LASIK or PRK or SMILE, or they may benefit from phakic IOL. Presbyopia will eventually affect everybody, and that will take patients into a new phase where they’re trying to regain some near vision, and there are different choices to elect—monovision or presbyopia-mitigating drops or maybe RLE. As time progresses, they’ll develop a cataract and will be in a new phase of their refractive journey where we’ll be talking about other issues and technologies, Dr. McCabe said. 

“We’re going to link that together and get a bigger picture of how we think of a patient not as just a time point in their refractive journey but across their entire life,” she said. “We’ve likened that to a triathlon where each section or phase of the triathlon builds on and impacts the overall success of the event that the patient is having. Even when you’re in the earlier phases of helping a patient, you should be thinking toward the future and the fact that they’re going to have other evolutions that happen in their eye health and how what you’re choosing today is going to impact their choices in the future.”

A highlight of Refractive Day will be the annual Steinert Lecture, delivered by an innovator in the field of refractive surgery. This year, it will be delivered by Stephen Slade, MD, a true pioneer in corneal refractive surgery. Dr. Slade will be speaking on “RLE: What Would Roger Do?”

Refractive Day will feature a variety of presentation formats, including lectures, case presentations, and lively panel discussion. Audience questions will be encouraged throughout. As a Subspecialty Day first, the final session of the day will feature the moderators from each session recapping the lifelong refractive journey and responding to audience questions collected from throughout the day.  

Refractive Day will also help set the stage for refractive symposia taking place throughout the ASCRS Annual Meeting. 

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About the physicians

Daniel Chang, MD
Cataract and Refractive Surgeon
Empire Eye and Laser Center
Bakersfield, California

Marjan Farid, MD
Director of Cornea, Cataract, and Refractive Surgery 
Gavin Herbert Eye Institute
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California

Francis Mah, MD
Director, Cornea Service
Scripps Clinic
La Jolla, California

Cathleen McCabe, MD
Medical Director
The Eye Associates
Bradenton, Florida

Nathan Radcliffe, MD
New York Ophthalmology
New York Eye Surgery Center
New York, New York

Vance Thompson, MD
Vance Thompson Vision
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Contact 

Chang: dchang@empireeyeandlaser.com
Farid: mfarid@hs.uci.edu
Mah: Mah.Francis@scrippshealth.org 
McCabe: cmccabe13@hotmail.com
Radcliffe: drradcliffe@gmail.com
Thompson: vance.thompson@vancethompsonvision.com