Therapeutic advancements for retinal disease

Leo Semes, OD, FAAO, caught up with Optometry Times' to discuss key takeaways from his presentation, "Advances in therapies for retinal disease," which he co-presented with Drs. A. Paul Chous, Mohammad Rafieetary, and Diana Shectman, during EyeCon 2022 held in Marco Island, Flordida.

This transcript has been edited for clarity:

I'm Leo Semes, Professor Emeritus of optometry and vision science at the University of Alabama Birmingham. And my topic today, I'm going to be part of a panel talking about new therapies for retinal diseases.

And we're going to be talking specifically about neovascular problems, as well as intraocular tumors. And we're going to begin by talking about some of the previous treatments for age-related macular degeneration and proliferative diabetic retinopathy, where the idea was pretty much to stabilize the patient's visual acuity.

We had little 40 years ago with regard to guidance on preventive strategies. And today, some of the newer strategies allow us not only to stabilize the patient's vision in those cases, but also improve visual acuity. And with better visual performance, we have better outcomes and happier patients.