Eyeworld Daily News

40 | EYEWORLD DAILY NEWS | APRIL 24, 2022 ASCRS ANNUAL MEETING DAILY NEWS F rancis Price Jr., MD, will deliver the Charles D. Kelman, MD, In- novator's Lecture during tomorrow's Innovators Gen- eral Session. Dr. Price is the founder and president of Price Vision Group and the Cornea Research Foundation of America. "My dad was a physician and he told me he felt sorry for me when I started because I'd missed the golden age of medicine. The regulatory burden has greatly increased since his time, yet we've been blessed with amazing therapeutic advances that have trans- formed how we care for patients," he said, noting that he began private practice in 1982. In 1988, Dr. Price founded the Cor- nea Research Foundation of America to study corneal transplants. At the time, he said, no one was tracking long- term corneal transplant outcomes on a large scale in the U.S., even though it was the most common solid tissue transplant. The Foundation started a registry database for corneal trans- plants and began other clinical studies. "We published corneal transplant studies of more than 1,000 patients and looked at survival rates, factors associated with rejection, etc.," he said, adding that other studies evaluated an early excimer laser and whether topical steroids were needed with LASIK. Dr. Price said his practice was among the first to adopt endothelial keratoplasty and could see in surgical cases and by tracking outcomes that this procedure was superior to pen- etrating keratoplasty. Other research included prospective studies comparing the safety and efficacy of different top- ical steroid dosing regimens to prevent transplant rejection. More recently, he led a multicenter study that compared patient-reported outcomes with LASIK vs. a control group of successful con- tact lens wearers. "We found that LASIK blew away contacts in terms of patient satisfac- tion, improvement in night vision, and reduction of dry eye symptoms," Dr. Price said. "An interesting finding was that patients who relied on glasses before having LASIK were more likely to report dry eye problems afterward. We found that 75% of those who wore glasses preoperatively reported that they had tried contacts but discontin- ued use because of dry eyes. Thus, we identified a group in which we need to be more aggressive in treating dry eyes before and after LASIK." In his lecture, "Improving Patient Care Through Tracking Outcomes," Dr. Price said he is going to talk about the importance of tracking results if you're doing something new so you can confirm if it really works and improve upon it. "I'm not the great inventor that Dr. Kelman was, but I think everyone in ASCRS is an innovator. ASCRS was founded to promote advances in lens implants and refractive surgery. It's hard to believe now, but when I did my training, many of the training programs frowned upon phacoemulsi- fication, lens implants, and refractive surgery. I think ASCRS attracts people who want to be innovators and who enjoy it. "The key to innovation and what Dr. Kelman did, and what I try to do, is to keep trying to find better ways to deliver care to our patients," he said. Dr. Price will also offer some history on how regulations on research and new technologies were different in earlier years—for better and for worse. "It was a lot wilder when I started prac- tice," he said. In addition to his private practice and work with the Cornea Research Foundation of America, Dr. Price serves as president and co-founder of the Medical Practice Consortium, a health insurance plan for group medical practices in Indiana. He has been recognized with other awards and achievements throughout his career, has authored more than 250 peer-re- viewed publications and book chapters, and was the principal investigator on more than 130 clinical studies for ophthalmic devices, medications, and surgical techniques. Other presentations within the Innovators General Session include an FDA Update from Wiley Chambers II, MD, an introduction to the Digital Ophthalmic Society from Eric Rosen- berg, DO, "Contact Lens Drug Delivery" by Joseph Ciolino, MD, "OcuRing: The Future of Dropless Cataract Surgery" by Kenneth Mandell, MD, "EVO ICL" by Roger Zaldivar, MD, "Intrastromal Delivery of AAV-Idua for MPS 1" by Parisa Zamiri, MD, and "Inside-Out: Using Cell Therapy to Replace Diseased Corneal Endothelium" by John Ber- dahl, MD. These will be followed by dis- cussion and a panel that will include Nathan Radcliffe, MD, Nicole Fram, MD, Sumitra Khandelwal, MD, and Terry Kim, MD, moderated by Edward Holland, MD. A look at the Innovator's Lecture

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