AOA 2023: Inside the top 5 myths of myopia management

At AOA 2023, Kevin Chan, OD, MS, FAAO, is presenting a course entitled, "Top 5 myths of myopia management and how to overcome them," alongside Brett O'Connor, OD, FAAO, in Washington, DC.

Video transcript

Emily Kaiser:
Hi, everyone. I'm Emily Kaiser with Optometry Times, and I'm sitting down with Dr. Kevin Chan, who is presenting a course entitled, "Top 5 myths of myopia management and how to overcome them," at Optometry's Meeting, which is hosted by the AOA in Washington, DC. Welcome, Dr. Chan! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

Kevin Chan, OD, MS, FAAO:
Thank you so much for having me.

Kaiser:
I'm excited for you to be here. So first, can you give us a brief overview of your course?

Chan:
Sure. Um, so for this year at AOA in Washington, DC, I have a privilege and honor to speak and alongside my colleague, Dr. Brett O'Connor. And Dr. O'Connor and I will be discussing about some of the typical myths and misconceptions about myopia management, and hopefully we'll be able to encourage more ECP [eye care providers] to be able to overcome those dilemma.

Kaiser:
Fantastic. What do you hope that optometrists will take away from your talk?

Chan:
Yeah, so just to give you a brief overview and glimpse, and I'm not going to disclose too much, hopefully, as you know, for those who are going to join, we're [not] going to take a little bit more message away from the talk.

But basically, I want to divide this talk into 4-5 different sections, and briefly talk about like, what is the main common misconception that ECP have been facing in daily practice? Because I've been speaking to a lot of ECP, and they all share the common theme that they found there's no demand for myopia management in their practice. That's obviously a myth. All right, we can do a lot more than just claiming there's no demand. And some of them also said, you know, there's not enough population base for treating myopia. And that's also not true.

And later on, we're going to dissect into different section looking into the technical aspect of myopia management, and how we can equip them to be more engaged in clinical training and what kind of equipment they should need for our treating myopia kids. And later on, we're gonna dissect into something more practical, you know, specifically, like how can we encourage ECP to dive into myopia management because it's essentially very financially rewarding and very profitable for the practice. If they don't do myopia management and practice probably they're missing a big chunk of the revenue.

And last but not least, you know, myopia management should not be considered as a time-consuming task. Just like how we manage other aspects of optometry including glaucoma, or macular degeneration, all the retina stuff. Myopia is just one of the few aspects that we need to be able to do with confidence.

So I hope that the take-home message from this talk is that by the end of the seminar, practitioners will be able to understand the essence of myopia management is simply not just a lip service. It's actually more to do with the action how we can put the word into practice. And it's much simpler than most people would think. And we just need to gather more thought and action to help enhance their perspective and help and enhance their toolbox so that we can benefit more, myopia patients in need.

Kaiser:
That sounds absolutely fascinating. How will this information trickle down into patient care?

Chan:
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when it comes to this subject, you know, a lot of family and parents are not familiar with myopia management still, and they're still a underserved area. And so we as the ECP need to convey the message effectively, so that patients will be more able to get familiarized with [the fact that] myopia management [is] just as common as like kids getting braces, or you need to do something for the kid, you know, just—it should be a no-brainer for eye care. So hopefully, by the end of this course, ECP will be able to gather more thought and ideas to bring into their practice so that they can help enhance the communication with their patients.

Kaiser:
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing and for taking the time to talk to me, and I can't wait to see you in Washington, DC.

Chan:
Thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you all too.