AAOpt 2023: What's in the forecast for dry eye?

At the 2023 American Academy of Optometry Meeting (AAOpt) meeting Tracy Doll, OD, FAAO, co-presented the session, "Sunny With a Chance of Tears: What's in the Forecast for Ocular Surface Dryness Therapies?" Doll presented alongside Lisa Hornick, OD, MBA, FAAO; Mila Ioussifova, OD, FAAO; and Pamela E. Theriot, OD, FAAO.

Video transcript

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

Kassi Jackson:
Hi everyone, I'm sitting down with Dr Tracy Doll who's here to talk about, "Sunny with a Chance of Tears, What's in the Forecast for Ocular Surface Dryness Therapies," which she is co-presenting at the American Academy of Optometry meeting this year in New Orleans. Welcome, Dr Doll.

Tracy Doll, OD, FAAO:
Thank you for having me. We're really excited about this lecture.

Jackson:
Yeah, it sounds like it's gonna be a blast. So, can you tell us a bit about the presentation?

Doll:
The presentation is actually going to be really fun, because we're actually going to do a little bit of a meteorologist weathercaster theme. We're going to bring the current climate of what is hot [and] what is right now in dry eye therapies and technologies.

We're also going to talk about what's in the forecast because there are a lot of big decisions to be made in pharma and there's a lot of things that are right around the corner, which are going to become available to us. It's been a pretty exciting year when it comes to pharma and technology in the realm of dry eye, so we're super excited to let everyone know what's happening right now.

Jackson:
That's wonderful. What are some key takeaway points that you hope optometrist who attended your talk take home with them?

Doll:
What we're really hoping that people will take away from it is the multifactorial nature of ocular surface dryness and be able to pick up different therapies that may be able to target the different facets of ocular surface dryness as a disease state umbrella. We know there's a lot of things that can contribute to dryness and it can be really frustrating as an ocular surface dryness provider to try and figure out different ways to attack and take down that inflammatory beast. So we're going to talk about how to hit it from different angles and that's really exciting because we have options we've never had before.

Jackson:
Yeah, and how can practice owners take all this information and leverage it to better run their clinics and provide better patient care?
There's a lot of excellent support with the pharma industry and biotechnology. So, we're hoping to help the other doctors to know who to contact, who's up and coming in this space, and just really make it accessible to see where these different, new treatment therapies are going to be indicated and how they can bring it in tomorrow with if they would like.

Jackson:
Yeah, and how do these new treatments better impact patient care?
Sure, a lot of them were looking at, again, hitting different facets of ocular surface dryness. There's new things for blepharitis, there's new anti-inflammatory options, there's new technology, all of those things are going to be coming into the space to hit different things we haven't been able to treat before or different facets of dry eye that we haven't been able to manage as well as in the past. They're faster, they're more effective, and they're easier for patients to incorporate in their daily lives.

Jackson:
Wonderful. What do you think the future of dry eye will look like?

Doll:
This is a really exciting topic. I think the future of dry is actually going to be hitting a lot of lifestyle factors. But also, when it comes to using pharma and technology, it's all going to come down to identifying the underlying reason why that patient's eye is angry and not supporting tears. It's all going to come down to individualizing the process and figuring out why each patient is angry because ocular surface dryness isn't one size fits all. It's all about tailoring it effectively to that patient's brand of information.

Jackson:
Wonderful. Well, Dr Doll, thank you so much for your time today.

Doll:
Thank you.