Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Time: 4:00-5:30pm ET.

Presented by Dr. Graeme Pollock, Director of Lions Eye Donation Service, Centre for Eye Research Australia
Hosted by Gary Rockl, Tissue Innovation Specialist from Héma-Québec

The presentation will examine the technical aspects of organ culture of donor corneas and the benefits that may accrue through its adoption. It places this within the context of the forces affecting supply, demand and distribution of corneas in Australia.
• What are the technical requirements of organ culture?
• What are the benefits and disadvantages of the system?
• How does Australia approach national networking, self-sufficiency and sustainability in the provision of corneas for transplantation?

About the Featured Presenter:

Dr. Graeme A. Pollock, BSc (Hons) GCUT MPH PhD OAM
Dr Pollock is the Director of Lions Eye Donation Service at the Centre for Eye Research Australia, Melbourne. He has spent the past 30 years involved in eye banking at local, national, and international levels. Having been trained in pathology at the University of Melbourne, His association with donation and transplantation extends back to the 1980’s while working in organ preservation for transplantation. He completed his doctorate in this field at the University of Queensland and University of Cambridge. Graeme also holds a master’s degree in public health majoring in Health Administration from Monash University, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in University Teaching from the University of Melbourne.

His interests include medical standards and guidelines in the field of eye banking. He is a past Chair of the Eye Bank Association of Australia and New Zealand, past-President of the Australasian Transplant Coordinators Association, a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Eye Bank Association of America and a founding member of the Global Alliance of Eye Bank Associations. In 2019 he was awarded an Order of Australia for service to corneal transplantation and education.

This meeting will be recorded for those who are unable to attend.

COS EDI Webinar: November 23, 8PM ET

LGBTQ2S+ Issues in Ophthalmology: Working Towards Equity

Join us on Wednesday, November 23 as COS presents a webinar entitled LGBTQ2S+ Issues in Ophthalmology: Working Towards Equity, presented by Dr. Michael A. Puente.

In this 1.5-hour webinar, we will examine the status of health equity for LGBTQ2S+ patients and professional equity for LGBTQ2S+ ophthalmologists, with a view to creating safe spaces for and allyship with the LGBTQ2S+ community. A lecture by Dr. Michael Puente will be followed by a case-based panel discussion.

Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Time: 8:00-9:30 pm ET

Learning Objectives

At the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Establish a baseline working knowledge of key concepts related to gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation
Examine the status of health equity for LGBTQ2S+ patients and professional equity for LGBTQ2S+ ophthalmologists
Create safe spaces for the LGBTQ2S+ community in both clinical and professional settings
Foster allyship with the LGBTQ2S+ community in ophthalmology

Dr. Michael A. Puente, Jr.

Michael Puente, MD, is an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado and a pediatric ophthalmologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He is a co-founder of the LGBTQ+ Interest Group of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and volunteers as a mentor in AAO’s Minority Ophthalmology Mentoring Program. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Advocacy Committee of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) and is a member of the AAPOS Taskforce on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

He has led an advocacy campaign to overturn the United States Food and Drug Administration’s ban on corneal donation by men who have sex with men, working with members of the United States Congress as well as leadership of the American Medical Association, Eye Bank Association of America, and AAO. He has presented on LGBTQ+ issues in ophthalmology at national and international conferences and has multiple publications in this field.

Accreditation

This webinar is an Accredited Group Learning Activity (Section 1) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification Program of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and approved by the Canadian Ophthalmological Society. You may claim a maximum of 1.5 hours.

This webinar has been supported by an educational grant from Bayer.

Date: Wednesday, October 26th, 2022

Time: 5:30 – 7:30 pm, EST

Location: Online

There is an urgent need to stabilize the health care system – as well as growing calls for its transformation. Solutions are not in short supply. But getting from now to next depends on bold choices.

The CMA is hosting a series of events to tackle those choices, bringing together physicians with other health stakeholders for candid debate.

With federal, provincial and territorial Health Ministers set to meet in November, our first event will focus on how to pay for better health care in the short and long term, and how to ensure accountability for the results.

CMA President Dr. Alika Lafontaine will host a panel featuring:

Christy Clark, former premier of British Columbia

Christy led Canada’s third largest province from 2011 to 2017. Throughout her term, she demonstrated strong economic growth, fiscal management and job creation. Christy retired in 2017 as the longest serving female premier in Canada and the only female Canadian premier to be re-elected.

Today, Christy is a senior advisor at Bennett Jones LLP in Vancouver. She also chairs, advises, and directs several non-profit and corporate boards. In 2018, she was recognized by the Women’s Executive Network as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women and was inducted into their Hall of Fame.

Chantal Hébert, political raconteur/columnist

Chantal is a veteran journalist whose work appears in The Toronto Star and the magazine L’Actualité. She is part of CBC The National’s weekly political panel “At Issue.” And she is the author of two books: The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was, with Quebec broadcaster Jean Lapierre, and French Kiss: Stephen Harper’s Blind Date.

Chantal is currently a Senior Fellow with Massey College at the University of Toronto and holds honourary degrees from a dozen Canadian universities. In 2012, she was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2019, her Parliamentary Press Gallery peers awarded her the Charles Lynch Award for long-standing coverage of national issues.

Stephen McNeil, former premier of Nova Scotia

Stephen served two terms as premier of Nova Scotia, from 2013 to 2021, before retiring from provincial politics. His government passed five consecutive balanced budgets and led the province through the COVID-19 pandemic. He also served as the dean of Canadian premiers during this time.

A former small business owner, Stephen spent 18 years as an elected official, representing the riding of Annapolis. He was leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party from 2007 to 2021. Stephen is currently a strategic business advisor in Halifax with law firm Cox & Palmer.

Learn more about health funding.

Join us on October 26, 2022.

Register Here

Simultaneous interpretation will be available.

Already registered? Access the virtual event

The developers’ goal was to create a free online tool that helps ophthalmologists aggregate the major online IOL calculators in one site, allowing them to get multiple results with only one data entry session.

“This will reduce typing mistakes, provide a better view, and allow users to compare results, eventually helping to get better refractive outcomes,” Dante Luis Buonsanti told EuroTimes.

The developers used a technique called web scraping. This is the sort of thing seen when using a hotel or air travel search engine. Web scraping uses bots to extract content from several websites and sends it to a single site. The user can then compare results from seven current calculators: Barrett Universal II, Cooke K6, Evo, Hill-RBF, Hoffer QST, Kane, and PEARL GDS. The site also “scraped” a comprehensive list of IOLs with optimized constants from IOL.com.

Read More Here

The ESCRS online IOL calculator is now live at iolcalculator.escrs.org.

The 14th Annual Congress on Controversies in Ophthalmology: (COPHy) taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, March 24-25, 2023.

Date: March 24- 25, 2023

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

The great success of the previous COPHy Congresses, held across Europe in Prague, Barcelona, Istanbul, Budapest, Lisbon, Sorrento, Warsaw, Madrid, Athens and Dublin as well as the enthusiastic feedback received from the most recent virtual congresses, confirmed the need for proceeding with the 14th edition of this dynamic Congresses.

COPHy in Lisbon will follow the theme of our previous congresses and will be devoted to evidence-based debates and discussions amongst session moderators, speakers and the audience, all of whom will examine and analyze the most relevant and controversial issues within the field of ophthalmology. This educational Congress will continue to discuss controversies in retina, as well as other areas of ophthalmology, such as neuro-ophthalmology and uveitis.

Allowing ample time for speaker-audience discussion, the Congress aims at reaching up-to-date recommendations to ongoing debates even when data remains limited, through evidence-based medicine, including expert opinion. Participants will have the opportunity to take part in this vibrant meeting which will facilitate discussions on the shared experiences and opinions of leading local and international experts.

More information here.

We are pleased to share with you the Canadian Rheumatology Association Recommendations for the Screening, Monitoring, and Treatment of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis–Associated Uveitis.
 
These Canadian JIA-associated uveitis guidelines were developed by a working group of 14 pediatric rheumatologists, 6 ophthalmologists, 2 methodologists and 3 caregiver/patient representatives using a GRADE-Adolopment approach applied to the 2019 ACR JIA-Associated Uveitis Guidelines. This streamlined method was chosen to develop Canadian guidelines considering the Canadian context, including patient preferences, cost/resource considerations, and feasibility of implementation.

The recommendation has been published as a living guideline on MAGIC authoring and publication platform (MAGICapp) and has also been published as a full manuscript in the Journal of Rheumatology.

Click here to read the CRA Recommendations for JIA-Associated Uveitis on MAGICapp

Click here to read the full manuscript published in the Journal of Rheumatology

Congratulations and thank you to the CRA Uveitis Guidelines Panel, led by Drs. Roberta Berard and Deb Levy, and supported by Guidelines Committee Chair Dr. Glen Hazlewood and methodologist Jordi Pardo Pardo. These guidelines were developed in collaboration with several ophthalmology colleagues and have been endorsed by the Canadian Ophthalmological Society Board. Special thanks as well to Dr. Arnav Agarwal for his assistance with the MAGICapp platform.

The CRA will be sharing these documents with the larger rheumatology community including disease organizations, patient groups and Canadian media outlets. We encourage you to share it with your associates and colleagues via email or social media.

All media enquiries should be forwarded directly to Ahmad Zbib at [email protected] or through the CRA’s website at https://rheum.ca/contact-us/.
 
On behalf of the CRA Board of Directors,

Ahmad M Zbib MD CPHIMS-CA
Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Rheumatology Association
Phone: 905-952-0698 EXT 8
Email: [email protected]

Title:  Walter Wright 20/20+2: Cornea, Anterior Segment and Refractive Surgery

Date:  December 2nd – 3rd

Location:  Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, ON

Guest Speakers:  Drs. Anthony J.  Aldave, James Chodosh, Sadeer B. Hannush, Carol L. Karp, Terry Kim, Christopher J. Rapuano, Elmer Tu, Stephanie Watson

This year’s Walter Wright program will showcase an exciting and relevant presentation of cornea, anterior segment and refractive surgery. Diagnostic and therapeutic tools for corneal disorders and recommendations on the diagnosis and management will be presented. We will take a closer look at infections and inflammation, keratoconus and ectasia, surgical cornea, ocular surface and limbal stem cell disease, cataract and anterior segment surgery and refractive surgery. We welcome an internationally recognized panel of speakers to share their knowledge and experience. With a combination of lectures and case presentations, this meeting promises to be a high yield, academically exciting conference. Aimed towards the comprehensive ophthalmologist, we look forward to having you join us.

For more information and to register click here:

The October 2022 CJO is now available online. Here are some of the highlights: 

Resident Perspectives + visual abstract: Our amazing team of residents have summarized 6 articles with a focus on what’s most relevant to ophthalmology learners here in Canada and around the globe, including the article featured in our October visual abstract, Macular thickness fluctuation in neovascular age-related macular degeneration treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor.

Original research articles:

·  Canadians’ attitudes toward corneal donation: informational-motivational videos increase willingness toward corneal donation

·  Clinical outcomes of a diffractive trifocal intraocular lens with femtosecond laser, digital tracking, and intraoperative aberrometry

·  Bacillary layer detachment in acute nonpenetrating ocular trauma

·  Quantifying the cost of single-use minims and multidose bottles for eye drops in routine ophthalmic practice: a multicentre study

• Clinicopathologic analysis of conjunctivochalasis and paste-pinch-cut conjunctivoplasty for management

Research letters, photo essays, and case reports:

· Severe ophthalmic involvement in granulomatosis with polyangiitis resistant to cyclophosphamide [photo essay]

· Multimodal imaging in perifoveal unilateral retinal pigment epithelium dysgenesis [photo essay]

· Ultra-wide-field retinal imaging in tetralogy of Fallot before and after cardiac surgery [case report]

· Superior limbic keratoconjunctivitis following ptosis repair [case report]

·Intraocular pressure fluctuations in a professional woodwind musician with advanced glaucoma [correspondence]

Follow the CJO on social media:

Twitter: @CanJOphth

Instagram: @cjo_jco

Facebook: CanJOphth

October 2022

Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) Joint Position Statement on Biosimilar Drugs

Biosimilar biologic drugs (biosimilars*) were introduced in the Canadian market in 2009. The first ophthalmic biosimilar for intravitreal injection is expected to be launched in Canada in the late fall of 2022. With this launch, it is expected that use of biosimilars across Canada will rapidly increase.

Read the full position statement here