The opening session of the ASCRS annual meeting in Boston featured a transfer of office from outgoing president Elizabeth Yeu, MD, to Vance Thompson, MD, who will serve as president of the organization in 2024-25. A number of awards were also presented at the session on Friday afternoon, with Nir Shoham-Hazon, MD, receiving the Educator’s Award; Andrew Kao, MD, being named the ASCRS Foundation’s Operation Sight Volunteer of the Year; and Martin Spencer, MD, receiving the ASCRS Foundation’s Chang-Crandall Humanitarian Award. In addition, Professor Peter Choyce, FRCS, DOMS, MS, was inducted into the ASCRS Hall of Fame.
Nearly 10 years ago, Dr. Shoham-Hazon — a specialist in glaucoma and advanced anterior segment surgery — began teaching minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) in the ASCRS skills transfer labs. He also helps to train fellow surgeons year-round in his home region of rural New Brunswick, Canada, where he is director of the Miramichi EyeNB & Surgical Centre of Excellence. Dr. Shoham-Hazon also serves as an assistant professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and a clinical assistant professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. “It invigorates me to continue and teach more but also learn more myself,” he said. “With novel MIGS procedures, I too have to stay up to date and learn new technologies, which keeps me abreast in the field through clinical, surgical, and research opportunities.”
Dr. Kao, who practices at Empire Eye and Laser Center in Bakersfield, California, has been a volunteer with Operation Sight for many years. Through that program has helped hundreds of patients who could not otherwise afford cataract surgery. “The thing that means the most about this award is that it bring attention to the needs of these patients,” he told the audience.
Dr. Spencer, an ophthalmologist who practices on Vancouver Island, Canada, has traveled to Nepal, India, and more than 10 other low-income countries since 1986, training local ophthalmologists in surgical techniques. He originally taught the technique of extracapsular cataract surgery to physicians at Aravind Eye Hospital in India. The ASCRS Foundation will donate $100,000 in his honor to a pair of charitable care organizations that he has long been involved with, the Seva Foundation and Seva Canada.
Through an inspirational video, meeting attendees learned more about the life and career of Dr. Choyce (1919-2001), who challenged the accepted wisdom of the ophthalmic community from the late 1940s to the 1970s, working with fellow ophthalmologist Harold Ridley to develop and refine the original acrylic intraocular lenses. Dr. Choyce faced threats to his career but persisted in keeping alive the idea of implantable lenses. His friend Richard Packard, MD, FRCS, FRCOphth, accepted the award on Dr. Choyce’s behalf.
Editor’s note: you can download photos to accompany this article from the ASCRS media page, https://www.eyeworld.org/mediagallery/