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ASCRS S U N DAY, M AY 17, 2 0 2 0 | AS C R S V I R T U A L A N N U A L M E E T I N G DAILY NEWS By Liz Hillman Editorial Co-Director A special session Satur- day morning focused on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on ophthalmic practices. "Turn- ing the Lights Back On Part 1" was supported by Alcon. Eric Donnenfeld, MD, Gar- den City, New York, described COVID-19 as "the most dev- astating infectious disease in over 100 years." Over the last few months, ophthalmologists have closed or restricted their normal practice, but now is the time to consider returning to patient care. Dr. Donnenfeld thanked first responders who put themselves in harm's way during the pandemic, but he said that the ophthalmologist is a hero at this time as well. "This person is equally a hero in that anyone who works at a slit lamp and cares for patients to improve or stabilize their vision is putting them- selves in harm's way being literally 12 inches away from the respiratory tract of the patient, potential COVID-19," he said. Dr. Donnenfeld introduced what would be covered in the session and applied the values of Hippocrates to those in oph- thalmology today. "… let's care for our patients, let's observe and HIGHLIGHTS YES SYMPOSIUM P. 16 FILM FESTIVAL WINNERS P. 22 TRIFOCAL IOL RESEARCH P. 52 continued on page 3 continued on page 4 'Turning the Lights Back On' session delivers informative message: 'Hope is on the way' 'Achieving 20/Happy in 2020' and meridian or axis. "You can't solely add or subtract values," he said. To analyze astigmatism, you need to break it down into cartesian values (cosine and sine functions), perform calculations on x and y sepa- rately, and reassemble x and y into the astigmatism value in conventional notation. How can we make this more straightforward? "We need intuitive terminology and displays that are clear and complete," Dr. Koch said. Dr. Koch said that in a 2018 Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery guest editorial, he and Drs. Abulafia, Holladay, Wang, by Ellen Stodola Editorial Co-Director D uring the symposium "Advanced Cataract Surgery: Achieving 20/Happy in 20/20," presenters addressed a number of topics in cataract surgery, including refractive cataract surgery, patient communica- tion, management of compli- cated cases, and cutting-edge technologies. Douglas Koch, MD, Hous- ton, Texas, presented on analyzing astigmatism using double-angle plots. Analyzing astigmatism out- comes is complicated, he said, because we're dealing with two variables: power or magnitude Dr. Vasavada describes different types of "small eyes" and offered pearls for managing these. Source: Abhay Vasavada, MD, screenshot from presentation improve vision, and we must do no harm. The issue of doing no harm has never been more important than it is today. Patient expectations have changed. Now patients expect us to not only provide technologically advanced ex- aminations, but they also have to be very safe examinations," Dr. Donnenfeld said, adding later that "hope is on the way." Treating Michael Niederman, MD, clini- cal director and associate chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Weill Cornell, New York, New York, gave an overview of COVID-19 infection and response and how treatment options vary by illness stage. Early in the infection—the viral response phase—patients, most often, experience a fever and dry cough with lympho- penia as a clinical sign. In the second stage—the pulmonary phase—there is an increased inflammatory response by the patient; they often experience shortness of breath with and without hypoxia. Chest imaging at this stage might appear ab- normal and there would likely be transaminitis and low-nor- mal procalcitonin. In the third stage—hyperinflammation— the patient experiences acute respiratory distress syndrome,

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