AAO 2024: Clinical trials of travoprost

At this year's American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) meeting, John Berdahl, MD, spoke about the recent clinical trials of travoprost and its use in patients with prior SLT.

Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

John Berdahl, MD: Hello, John Berdahl here at the American Academy of Ophthalmology. I'm a ophthalmologist at Vance Thompson Vision in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and was lucky to participate in the iDose clinical trials. And some of the data that we're presenting here is, how did iDose do in patients that had prior SLT, in particular those that had failed prior SLT. And the good news is it works. And you know, we know that prostaglandins work. We also know they can be tough on the surface of the eye. And so what we hope for is that by putting the travoprost directly inside the eye, we get better access to the trabecular meshwork with lower doses, and don't have to fight the barrier of the cornea or the side effects that come from applying a drug to the ocular surface. And indeed, that was the case.

And there's actually other data out there that shows that, in those big trials, the intracamral delivery of prostaglandins show that it lowers IOP even further. So it's good news for us. It's good news, most importantly, for our patients that in these difficult to treat patients, like those that had had a prior SLT, or maybe even in those that prostaglandins aren't quite good enough, that the iDose can help us in those situations.