print this page | email this page
Ophthalmologists gain clinical insights at Glaucoma Symposium
Saturday, February 7, San Francisco — Nearly 300 ophthalmologists gathered in the Marines Memorial Club for a symposium to learn the latest in diagnosing and treating glaucoma. The 13th annual symposium, sponsored by the Glaucoma Research Foundation, Alcon, Allergan, Pfizer, and others, updated the attending eye specialists on glaucoma medications, surgical and laser techniques, and glaucoma management algorithms.
The morning began with a presentation by H. George Tanaka, MD (California Pacific Medical Center) on Asian Angle Closure Glaucoma. Dr. Tanaka reported that the ratio of angle closure glaucoma (ACG) to primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) in urban Chinese in 2 to 1. He said that 90% of blindness from glaucoma in China is due to ACG, and that because ACG causes more blindness in Asian Americans than POAG, the need is great to find better treatments.
Kuldev Singh, MD (Director of Glaucoma Service, Stanford University) spoke on the topic of Normal Tension Glaucoma and how it differs from primary open angle glaucoma. The keynote speaker, Joel S. Schuman, MD (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) discussed advances in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a high-tech diagnostic instrument that can create a contour map of the optic nerve and measure the retinal nerve fiber thickness.
H. Dunbar Hoskins, Jr. MD spoke about the important work of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Hoskins has announced his retirement this year as Executive Vice President of the Academy. He has led the Academy since 1993.
Other speakers at the Symposium were Shan Lin, MD; John Hetherington, MD; Terri Pickering, MD; Sunita Radhakrishnan, MD; Robert L. Stamper, MD; and Andrew G. Iwach, MD.
The Glaucoma Symposium is presented annually by the Glaucoma Research and Education Group, based in San Francisco.