If you’re a retina specialist, you’ll be more likely than not to see patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) on a daily basis. Lasers and anti-VEGF therapy have transformed outcomes within a generation, but the former technology isn’t appropriate for all cases, and the latter can eventually lose efficacy – or in some cases, will never work well at all. So what can be done for these patients, when their macula is thickened or has a cystoid morphology, and the usual drugs don’t work?
We want to know what you do for these patients. First, the methods by which you diagnose these cases: the inflammatory markers you screen, the scale you use to measure visual acuity, the OCT images you take and what you look for. Second, how you treat the edema. How long do you persist with anti-VEGF therapy; have you tried triamcinolone? It’s those sort of things we would love to hear about. We want to work out what truly is the current best practice for the assessment and treatment of DME. How? By asking ophthalmologists to submit case studies that detail how you identify and manage long-standing refractory DME.
What’s in it for you? The chance to win one of five Travel Awards – we pay the winners’ airfares, accommodation and delegate fees to let you to attend the AAO 2014 annual meeting in Chicago in October. There are ten second prizes of having your case study featured on The Ophthalmologist website. The closing date for this competition is March 31st, so there’s not much time to ensure your great work has a chance of a great reward.
