Eyeworld Daily News

EW SHOW DAILY 8 Saturday, April 20, 2013 ASCRS News Today Reaching out to help ophthalmology and ophthalmologists by Vanessa Caceres EyeWorld contributing writer A t today's ASCRS Opening General Session, Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD, clinical professor of ophthalmology, New York University, New York, becomes the new ASCRS president. He follows David F. Chang, MD, clinical pro- fessor of ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Donnenfeld is a founding partner of Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island and Connecticut, national medical director of TLC Laser Eye Centers, and surgical direc- tor of the Lions Eye Bank of Long Island. He is a trustee of Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, N.H. During his nearly 30-year career, Dr. Donnenfeld has specialized in refrac- tive, cornea, and cataract surgery, as well as corneal transplantation. He has made significant advancements in the field; he was an original investigator and one of the first EyeWorld: How has your own participation with ASCRS changed since your initial involvement? Dr. Donnenfeld: I've been in- volved with ASCRS at a leadership level for the last 15 years. I was in- volved with the Young Ophthalmol- ogists Committee until they told me I was too old to belong! I was then involved with the FDA Clinical Committee. I joined the Cornea Clinical Committee and became chair about five years ago before I joined the Executive Board. My in- volvement at every level has been interesting and personally reward- ing. EyeWorld: What initiatives would you like to be involved with over the next year? Dr. Donnenfeld: What I hope to do as president is to provide continuity to the many important initiatives created by the Executive Board over the last several years and carried out by our incredible staff. Former ASCRS presidents Ed Holland, MD, and David Chang, MD, have worked hard on resident education. Bonnie An Henderson, MD, has joined in those efforts as well. I hope to expand these efforts and make sure ASCRS plays an im- portant role in augmenting resident education, above and beyond what they receive in their formal educa- tion. I hope to give ASCRS a more dynamic web presence. We have incredible clinical video provided every year by ASCRS members at the annual meeting. We plan on making a committee position on the ASCRS Board to supervise the formation of videos and the representation of those videos on our website. With this, ASCRS members can have a one-stop source for video of various surgical techniques to keep them in- formed of new surgical procedures and review old procedures they may not have performed in a long time. We hope to reach out to young resi- dents as well as older surgeons or ones who have taken leaves of absence to reintroduce them to new and old techniques. In addition, ASCRS is much more than cataract and refractive surgery. We are the leader in all sur- gical technology. The Glaucoma and Cornea Clinical Committees along with the Cornea Society have turned Glaucoma and Cornea Day into two of the largest and best glaucoma and cornea meetings in the world. There was a void in glaucoma therapy that is now being filled with minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS). ASCRS will provide leadership in ed- ucating comprehensive ophthalmol- ogists and glaucoma surgeons in the use of MIGS. The bottom line is that ASCRS has to be more than a society of like-minded individuals. We have to provide real value on a daily basis to all our members so that we can improve quality of patient care for all practitioners, and make ASCRS a must-have membership for ophthal- mologists who want to stay on the cutting edge in all forms of oph- thalmic surgery and practice man- agement. I'm obviously humbled by the opportunity and privilege to be the incoming president of ASCRS, espe- cially when I look at the legacy of ASCRS leadership. As president, I will be easily accessible. All ASCRS members should know that if they have a problem or question and are not getting answers, I'll be readily available and willing to help. I invite all ophthalmologists to become more involved with ASCRS. No ophthalmologist is more or less im- portant. We're all in this together. EyeWorld: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing ophthalmologists and ophthalmol- ogy right now? Dr. Donnenfeld: There are sub- stantial changes in healthcare deliv- ery, including access to patients, reimbursement, and monitoring. These changes have a daily impact on ophthalmologists and more im- portantly our patients. These are se- rious issues to deal with at ASCRS; we are committed to representing the hard-working ophthalmologist who needs to have his or her voice heard and questions answered. ASCRS represents the ophthalmolo- gist with an interest in not only cataract and refractive surgery but also glaucoma, cornea, and even retina. These are challenging times, but there are also extraordinary op- portunities in our profession. EW clinicians to perform excimer laser corneal surgery and femtosecond laser cataract surgery. He has partici- pated as an investigator for numer- ous other FDA clinical studies. Dr. Donnenfeld recently took some time to speak with EyeWorld and discuss the challenges that oph- thalmologists face now and what initiatives he plans to oversee during his presidency. EyeWorld: How did you first get involved in ASCRS? Dr. Donnenfeld: I became in- volved in 1984 during my residency at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospi- tal in New York City. One of our department leaders was Jack Dodick, MD, who was a previous president of ASCRS. He impressed upon me how important it was to get involved with ASCRS. That was early on in ASCRS' history as well. EyeWorld: Since you have been a member, how have you seen ASCRS change over the years? Dr. Donnenfeld: The associa- tion began as a small society for like- minded ophthalmologists interested in cataract surgery. It has now ex- panded to a global organization that brings value and information to thousands of ophthalmologists, and it expands the patient care and prac- tice opportunities for all of us on a regular basis. Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD "PresbyLASIK is particularly well suited for younger presby- opes," he said. "Complications from the surgery are manageable with other techniques." Complica- tions with the procedure are simi- lar to those with multifocal IOLs. Beyond the bifocal IOLs (re- fractive, diffractive, or hybrid), under investigation outside the U.S. are two trifocal lenses, the AT Lisa tri 839RP (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Jena, Germany) and the Finevision Trifocal (PhysIOL, Liege, Belgium). Both are diffractive lenses; for a 3 mm pupil, the lens provides 43% distance, 29% intermediate, and 15% near with a 1.75 D intermedi- ate add, 3.50 near add. The AT Lisa provides a +3.33 D near add, and a +1.66 D intermediate add at the IOL plane. Pupil independent up to 4.5 mm, the lens provides 50% distance, 30% near, and 20% inter- mediate, according to Quentin Allen, MD, Dunlap, Ill. EW Editors' note: Dr. Vukich has finan- cial interests with Abbott Medical Optics (Santa Ana, Calif.), AcuFocus (Irvine, Calif.), Avedro (Waltham, Mass.) and STAAR Surgical (Mon- rovia, Calif.). Dr. Gatinel has financial interests with AcuFocus. Dr. Tamayo has fi- nancial interests with AMO and Presbia, and holds patents relating to presby- LASIK. Dr. Allen has financial inter- ests with Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas), Allergan (Irvine, Calif.), and Bausch + Lomb (Rochester, N.Y.) continued from page 6

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