Catch up with what Optometry Times®' shared this week:

Optometry news

Elevating your contact lens practice brings numerous benefits

By Jessilin Quint, OD, MBA, MS, FAAO

Although optometrists do many things well, contact lenses are an area in which we especially thrive. Contact lenses are tools to enhance a patient’s vision, an opportunity for us to differentiate our profession, and a way to financially grow our practices. There are ample benefits to elevating a contact lens practice and taking it to the next level. Doing so often brings enhanced patient care, financial growth, and an ability to optically problem solve.

Here are 8 ways of elevating your contact lens practice.

1. Use key performance indicators
2. Never stop learning
3. Specialize
4. Embrace innovation
5. Advertise
6. Bill and code properly
7. Communicate value to patients
8. Evaluate current processes and systems

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Looking at pediatric eye care through a holistic lens

By Carrie Roitstein, OD

Let’s approach the topic of eye safety in the broader scope concerning children. One would typically imagine sports goggles and polycarbonate lenses, but what if you expand your mindset to embrace a wellness approach—a holistic approach that will foster long-term benefits to the health of children throughout all stages of life? A focus on wellness can lead to constructive dialogue translating into favorable results.

It is a lot simpler to achieve compliance wearing polycarbonate lens materials vs eating more greens, but the current practice model needs to shift if we wish to see healthier pediatric vision today and in the future.

The Oxford Languages definition of safety is “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.” Let’s take the word “safety” beyond eyewear and consider all aspects of life that we are trying to protect children from: obesity, myopia, eyestrain from devices, UV exposure, and so much more. To look at the bigger picture, we should challenge the scope of eye care so that professionals are proactively reducing the risk of eye disease with a holistic approach to health.

Most patients do not associate chronic disease with vision; therefore, it continues to be a challenge to connect the dots for patients. But if education begins at an early age, we can shift the attitude toward health of a younger generation. Wellness and preventive care can only benefit children in the long run and even deliver some positive incremental effects within the community.

This article centers around children’s wellness with 3 main topics: UV light, nutrition, and myopia. Today we have the tools to treat eye disease from a holistic perspective and start making changes at an early age.

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(VIDEO) Dompe's past developments, continual progress in NGF applications

By Flavio Mantelli, MD, PhD; Emily Kaiser, Assistant Managing Editor; Kassi Jackson, Editor

Flavio Mantelli, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at Dompé, sat down with Optometry Times®' assistant managing editor Emily Kaiser to chat about Dompé's role in nerve growth factor (NGF) applications.

Key highlights:

• NGF, neurotrophin, was discovered in the 50s by Italian scientist, Professor Rita Levi-Montalcini, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in the 80s.
• Today, NGF is a treatment for a condition that is neurotrophic keratitis, and the science behind it goes to the underlying mechanism of disease, which is the damage to corneal innervation.
• NGF eye drops have changed the management of the condition by ophthalmologists and optometrists.
• Dompe is currently running two phase 3 clinical trials in severe Sjogren's dry eye disease, as well as working on ophthalmic indications, developing formulations that are appropriate to test in clinical studies for indications of the back of the eye—targeting the preferential targets of nerve growth factor and neurotrophin, hence, the neural retina, the retinal ganglion cells or the optic nerve.

Watch the full interview...

ONYX trial results: Combo therapy gives no added benefit when treating nAMD

By Lynda Charters

The phase 2 ONYX trial of nesvacumab (Regeneron) plus aflibercept (Eylea, Regeneron) found that this combination used to treat neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) did not provide greater benefit to patients in visual acuity (VA) or central subfield thickness (CST) compared with aflibercept intravitreal injections alone,¹ according to the study investigators.

The investigators theorized that intravitreal nesvacumab, an anti-angiopoietin-2 therapy, plus aflibercept, an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drug, in a fixed-dose combination would be advantageous for treating nAMD, in that “both antibodies can be individually optimized, ensuring a specific dose of each component is delivered.”

Studies of preclinical models of pathologic ocular angiogenesis have suggested that VEGF and angiopoietin-2 are co-regulated in nAMD and may work together to promote pathologic neovascularization and increase vascular permeability.^2-4

Read the full study results...

(PODCAST) Practical management EP 3: Reaching your target audience

By Maria Sampalis, OD; Kassi Jackson, Editor

Maria Sampalis, OD, owner of Sampalis Eye Care in Cranston and Providence, Rhode Island, sat down with Optometry Times®' editor Kassi Jackson to talk all-things practice management.

On this week's episode, hear how to reach your target audience.

Listen now...

(VIDEO) Let's talk Controversies in Modern Eye Care: what to expect

By Robert Maloney, MD; Kassi Jackson, Editor

Robert Maloney, MD, of the Maloney-Shamie Vision Institute and one of the co-chairs of the 17th annual Controversies in Modern Eye Care meeting, caught up with Optometry Times®' editor Kassi Jackson to share what attendees can expect from the April meeting in Los Angeles.

See it here...