Eyeworld Daily News

3 EW SHOW DAILY ASCRS•ASOA Symposium & Congress, New Orleans 2016 to know what it's like to have a cer- tain disease. However, it's important to know that web information might not always be accurate. More than 90% of health articles on Wikipedia have some sort of factual inaccura- cy, he said. "The problem isn't lack of knowledge, it's a lack of how to apply that knowledge." Today, we have to redefine our- selves in health care because patients have as much access to information as physicians do, Dr. Pho said. Con- necting with patients online needs to be a health care imperative for the 21st century Social media is a powerful way to define our online reputations, he added. Dr. Pho finds that often when he gives talks, it might be the first time some of those in the medical community are hearing about social media platforms. But it's important to be aware of these platforms because 44% of people look online for physician informa- tion, he said. "You need to Google yourself at least once a week and see what comes up because that's what patients are doing," he added. Of- ten, what will show up under these results is from doctor review sites. The best way to establish an online presence is to create content about yourself online, Dr. Pho said. Fewer than 10% of readers go on to the second page of search results, so you need to control the top listings. Dr. Pho gave a step-by-step approach for establishing an online reputation. First, he said to put to- gether your bio and headshot. These should convey likeability, trustwor- thiness, and competence. Next, he said to claim your profile from a physician-rating site. Dr. Pho recom- mended 1 like Healthgrades, which is often the most visible. Third, he said to create a professional presence on places like LinkedIn, Doximity, and Google My Business. Stop and ask yourself after this what your goal for social media is, Dr. Pho said. As you become more comfortable being visible online, you can adopt social media plat- forms that fit your specific goals. If nothing about social media reso- nates with you or you don't have time, Dr. Pho said you can stop after creating a professional presence. The goal is to dominate the search engine for your name. Dr. Pho said he gets asked all the time what the return on investment with social media is. His answer: finding and connecting with new patients. Dr. Pho also shared 5 tips for dealing with criticism on the web. The first was to listen to that crit- icism. The second was to take the conversation offline and perhaps respond by phone or in person. The third tip was to read the fine print and report any comments that you think are suspicious. His fourth tip was to ask more patients to rate you online. Studies show that the ma- jority of reviews are positive online, he said. His last tip was to avoid the courts and don't sue. For a lot of us in health care, being visible online can be fright- ening, Dr. Pho said. But if we don't take the steps to define our online reputation, someone else will do it for us. Social media is giving us a voice and allowing us to be heard in health care, he said. "The biggest risk of social media is not using it at all in health care." EW continued from page 1 winding road, and corneal lamellar surgery is a revolution but it's still an evolution," he said. Dr. Tan refer- enced the Global Survey of Corneal Transplantation and Eye Banking, noting that in 2012 there were 185,576 corneal transplants per- formed in 116 countries. The lead- ing indication in 98 countries was keratoconus, and in actual global transplants performed, the highest was for Fuchs' dystrophy. "A third of all grafts performed globally now are lamellar," Dr. Tan said. However, a third of all countries globally still don't perform lamellar grafts at all. Dr. Tan shifted to discuss the DMEK procedure. It's very "elegant and delicate," he said, but is still a fairly crude surgery, using the prim- itive tools of air and balanced salt solution. He questioned whether it will ever become mainstream, saying that, at present, the adoption rate is still fairly low. It's not fair, Dr. Tan said, to compare DSAEK and DMEK because they're at different stages of evolu- tion. DSAEK is a mature procedure with significant improvements in techniques, like better insertion techniques. DSAEK also has less graft failure, endothelial damage, and dislocation rates with time. Meanwhile, DMEK is still in its first stage of surgical development. Cur- rent DMEK surgery has not evolved much since Melles first described the technique 8 years ago, he said. There are currently more surgical challeng- es and complications with DMEK, and surgeons are still in the learning curve stage. In order to make DMEK easier to perform, less surgically challenging, and more consistent to perform, Dr. Tan suggested seeking alternative surgical techniques to handle and control the donor Descemet's mem- brane better and seeking current or alternative surgical devices to im- prove surgical control of the donor and the anterior chamber. In conclusion, Dr. Tan said that the field of corneal surgery con- tinues to expand globally as better forms of selective replacement of the layers of the cornea are developed. The development of endothelial ker- atoplasty procedures promises lower rates of rejection, less complications, better vision, and enhanced graft survival rates, he said. But recent registry studies show the impact of the learning curve for these more surgically challenging procedures. Dr. Tan said that DMEK, as a surgical innovation, epitomizes the current distillation of our ability to replace the corneal endothelium, but the surgery needs to evolve, with improvements in surgical techniques or instrumentation, before the tip- ping point for widespread adoption can be achieved. Also presenting in the session were Rudy Nuijts, MD, Maastricht, the Netherlands, who highlighted the ESCRS PREMED Study, and Kerry Solomon, MD, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, who spoke about about trends toward improved quality of vision with lower add multifocal and segmented bifocal and trifocal IOLs. EW Editors' note: Dr. Srur has no financial interests related to his comments. Dr. Tan has financial interests with Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas), Allergan (Dublin), Bausch + Lomb (Bridgewater, New Jer- sey), Carl Zeiss Meditec (Jena, Germa- ny), and Santen (Osaka, Japan). continued from page 1 Panelists at the "60 Minutes" session weighed in after each presentation. The winner of Sunday's EyeWorld event drawing was: Rocio Gonzalez, MD, Chihuahua, Mexico

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