At Press Time

ARVO Theme is “The Aging Eye”

Keynote Session, Symposia to Focus on Aging Issues.

The theme of next month’s meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is “The Aging Eye.” To Frederick Ferris, M.D., clinical director of the National Eye Institute and president of ARVO, that is about as timely a topic as an organization devoted to eye care could select.

“We now have the first wave of baby boomers reaching 60,” asserts Dr. Ferris. “The four eye diseases most responsible for vision loss — AMD, cataract, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy — are all associated with aging. We need to focus on what we can do to help these people.”

Setting the tone for this year’s ARVO meeting will be the Keynote Session, featuring a presentation by William Novelli, president of the American Association of Retired People (AARP). His subject will be “The Public Health Impact of Eye Disease in the Elderly: What Can Be Done About It?”

A number of the symposia and mini-symposia scheduled for the ARVO meeting will also reflect “The Aging Eye” theme. Among the topics to be discussed in depth at these sessions will be accommodation, diabetic macular edema (DME), the economic impact of eye disease and the aging eye and visual performance.

The mini-symposium on DME will encompass the limitations of current treatments and the potential of future therapies. Major clinical trials have shown the efficacy of laser photocoagulation in managing this condition. However, new therapies such as anti-VEGF drugs and steroids are now in clinical trials and are expected to play an expanding role in future treatment of DME, says Arup Das, M.D., Ph.D., chief of ophthalmology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, who will serve as co-moderator of an expert panel.

“The mini-symposium on the economic impact of eye diseases will provide a series of discussions that will help attendees to understand the relationship between economics and other disciplines of interest to the ARVO community, particularly epidemiology, the importance of the economic impact of visual impairment in developed countries, the basics of preference-based outcome measures, decision modeling and the appropriate role of economic evaluations in the policy-making process,” says Kevin Frick, Ph.D., associate professor at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, who will participate in the discussion.

“ARVO is the most important worldwide meeting in the field of vision research,” says Dr. Ferris. “Go back about a decade and you will see dozens of abstracts and posters focused on VEGF. Today, we have approved treatments for AMD that are based on inhibiting VEGF. At this year’s meeting, research will be presented that will lay the groundwork for the new treatments that are coming in the next decade.”