AOA 2023: Stay current with the updated AMD landscape

Mohammad Rafieetary, OD, FAAO, sat down with Optometry Times®' assistant managing editor Emily Kaiser to give a brief overview of his presentation, "AMD updates: Staying current with its landscape," which he co-presented with Jay Haynie, OD, FAAO, during the 2023 AOA Optometry's Meeting in Washington, DC.

Video transcript

Emily Kaiser, Assistant Managing Editor:

Hi everyone. I'm Emily Kaiser with Optometry Times and I'm sitting down with Dr. Mohammad Rafieetary, who is presenting a course entitled, "AMD updates: Staying current with its landscape," at Optometry's Meeting, which is hosted by the AOA and is held in Washington DC. Welcome Dr. Rafieetary, thank you for taking the time.

Mohammad Rafieetary, OD, FAAO:

Thank you, Emily. Good to be here. It's always good chatting with you about these presentations.

This lecture about AMD [age-related macular degeneration], I'm really excited about because my co-presenter and colleague is Dr. Jay Haynie. And I venture to say that Jay and I are the first retina ODs in the country, so we've been in this retina space forever. And every occasion I get, which are not often, to be on the podium with Jay, I enjoy his knowledge of the subject and the camaraderie between the two of us.

So macular degeneration is one of these conditions that's common [and] is in everyday practice for an optometrist who sees adult patients, and is one of those conditions that unfortunately, is not going away. In fact, we have an expanding population of patients with age-related macular degeneration, we have to put this condition in the radar and be watchful for it because studies have shown that often it goes undiagnosed. And on the other hand, often goes misdiagnosed.

There are a whole host of other macular degenerative diseases that are not necessarily age-related macular degeneration, but they have similar genotypic and phenotypic findings that makes it confusing. And although some may think that's mundane and academic, no, it isn't, because you have to know about the different aspects of these diseases.

So Jay and I are going to present background of age-related macular degeneration. There are a lot of exciting stuff going on with the stuff that's in the pipeline: novel therapies, the new ons and the second generation treatments that are available for neovascular AMD, the new treatment that's available for geographic AMD, the other treatments in the pipeline we are looking forward to.

So this is going to be an exciting lecture; it's on Saturday, I believe 3-5p and I hope our colleagues will be able to attend this meeting so we can learn from each other. You know, we'd like to have attendance, engagement for them—for our colleagues—to tell us what it is they see in their communities and how they are dealing with these conditions. We often forget about the role of our colleagues who do low vision examination/vision rehabilitation in this patient population, so we need to have conversations about that.

Kaiser:

Yeah, absolutely. And what do you hope that optometrists take away from your talk?

Rafieetary:

Well, first of all, for us to understand the benefits of continuing education. These meetings are for us to stay up to date. If those who are unaware of the new upcoming treatment, how to diagnose geographic atrophy, when to refer this patient to retinal specialists—both neovascular AMD and geographic atrophy, to have conversations, to clarify some of these complexities, because AMD is a very complex disease. You know, we tried to simplify things, but this is a very complex disease. So hopefully we learn from each other.

Kaiser:

All right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and I can't wait to see you in DC.

Rafieetary:

Likewise; thank you.