ASCRS 2024: Pearls of clinical and non-clinical wisdom for young eye surgeons

At this year's ASCRS meeting, Ophthalmology Times Europe caught up with J. Morgan Micheletti, MD. He talked about myriad research projects he discussed at the meeting, and also emphasised the importance of the Young Eye Surgeons (YES)

Note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hi, I'm Morgan Micheletti. I'm a cataract refractive and anterior segment surgeon, as well as interventional glaucoma, at Berkeley Eye Center in Houston, Texas. I'm here at this meeting to discuss multiple research projects that we've had.

We've had multiple papers presented on things comparing different multifocal lenses to EDOF lenses in patients who have had prior refractive surgery, to different biometer comparisons, and nomograms for adjusting the measurements when we're trying to calculate for ICL sizing. There's this feeling that we have an issue with sizing ICLs, but really, we actually don't. It's a measurement conversion issue. And all the original scans were done with an Orbscan, and no one really uses the Orbscan anymore. So we've come up with a new nomogram that actually helps to adjust all of our modern-day biometry back into those original Orbscan-like values, which can then hopefully lead to more accurate sizing for ICLs. And again, it's not that we were choosing [the] wrong sizes, is that we were putting in the wrong numbers. And so hopefully, we can fix that. We also presented a study on dense lenses, and using biometers in those dense lens settings. It's been a great event so far: We've learned a lot, we've seen a lot of new things. There's a lot of things I'm really excited about.

One of the things that I'm most excited about when I come to these meetings is being involved in the YES programme, the young eye surgeons. It's a very powerful programme that helps to bring in the young minds and get them involved, get them feeling comfortable in going out into the real world, going out into practice and learning accelerate into the first couple of years of their practice. So the YES programme is really important. There's everything from webinars on how to integrate private practice research, to private practice versus academics, to building your culture and practice efficiency. So we have lots of different resources, both online and at the meeting, that can really help the young or evolving eye surgeon start to take things to the next level.