AOA 2023: The diaries of Demodex

Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, caught up with Optometry Times to tell us all about her presentation titled, "Demodex diaries," which she presented at the 2023 AOA Optometry's Meeting in Washington, DC.

Video transcript

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

Hi, I'm Cecilia Koetting here at AOA in DC. I am lecturing on Demodex. So the presentation on Demodex, we know that it's something that's really important. We're all starting to talk about it a lot more as far as understanding demodex blepharitis, the epidemiology, who has it, how to identify it, and also the treatment. And, with a new treatment coming around the corner, we're also kind of gearing up for something that might work a little bit better than some of our other previous treatments.

So how I hope this is going to trickle down into patient care is, really, the better identification of what is the root problem for a lot of our dry eye disease patients and ocular surface disease. We actually are probably missing the boat on how many of these are actually caused by Demodex. So a couple of the pearls that I have as far as, for what I'm hoping everybody's going to take away, number one, and I keep saying it, is have your patients look down. When they're in the slit lamp, we have them look up, we have them look down. When they're looking down, we can see the collarettes that are pathognomonic for demodex much easier. And that way, we can identify those patients and get them the most appropriate care versus just assuming they have ocular surface disease and not really seeing the underlying problem.