SECO 2023: Caring for myopic patients through lifestyle interventions

Ashley Wallace-Tucker, OD, FAAO, FSLS, Dipl ABO, sat down with Optometry Times®' assistant managing editor Emily Kaiser to share highlights from her portion of the myopia management panel held during SECO 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia.

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

Kaiser:

Hi, everyone. I'm Emily Kaiser with Optometry Times. And I'm sitting down with Dr. Ashley Wallace-Tucker, who is participating in the myopia management panel at SECO 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome Dr. Wallace-Tucker. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

Wallace-Tucker:

Thank you so much. Nice to see you, Emily.

Kaiser:

Nice to see you, too. So can you give us a brief overview of your presentation?

Wallace-Tucker:

Sure. So I get to be on a panel full of outstanding doctors, and the topic that I was tasked with covering are new and emerging anti-myopia intervention. So that's a little bit different than things that I've talked about in the past. I was really excited when I was asked by Dr. Jasper to cover that topic.

Kaiser:

How do you wish that clinicians would respond to this information?

Wallace-Tucker:

So I hope they're as excited as I am. So myopia management, as you probably know, is one of the hottest topics in optometry right now. We're all desperately trying to help these little myopes that are in Virginia in our practice, at an alarming rate. So there's lots of traditional treatments that we all know about. But some of these new techniques or new interventions a lot of people probably don't don't really know about or have heard of. So I'm hoping like I said, they're excited to to receive information and utilize it in their practices.

Kaiser:

So can you tell us a little bit more about those methods?

Wallace-Tucker:

Sure. I'm super excited to tell you a little bit more. So one of the biggest recommendations that I'll be talking about is outdoor time. So one thing that we know is that outdoor time is linked to preventing myopia onset. So I'll give a little bit more detail on what that outdoor time looks like, how much is recommended. Another thing is screen time recommendations. That's a question that I get all the time in the exam room, parents want to know exactly how much screen time their kids should be engaging with each day. So I have some recommendations there. I'll talk a little bit more about things on the horizon, like repeated low level red light therapy—that's something that's being done abroad; it's not being done much here in the US, but eventually those sorts of interventions will be available to us. And then lastly, I'll touch a little bit on sleep and how sleep has an impact on myopia and then potentially whether or not there's a link with nutrition. So we'll see.

Kaiser:

And what do you hope optometrists take away from your talk?

Wallace-Tucker:

With myopia management, the most typical interventions are contact lenses or atrophy, which is a pharmaceutical drop. Unfortunately, we don't have spectacles available to us yet. So some of the techniques that I'm going to be talking about are not glasses, not contacts, not drops, they're lifestyle interventions, they are screentime recommendations. So they're more like I said, lifestyle things that we can easily implement for patients of all ages. And patients that are interested in contact lenses or not, we still can help them.

Kaiser:

Fantastic. And is there anything else you'd like to cover that we haven't touched on?

Wallace-Tucker:

I don't think so. I mean, SECO is an excellent meeting. I'm excited to be a part of it. This is my second year being on the lecture circuit. I guess what SECO, so. No, I'm just excited to see everyone and I'm hoping to get a good crowd at our panel talk.

Kaiser:

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today and I can't wait to hear more.

Wallace-Tucker:

Thank you, Emily.