Eyes across the water to the American Academy of Optometry

The sheer size of the annual conference of the American Academy of Optometry conference, held this autumn in New Orleans, makes it impossible to cover adequately the parallel tracks of lectures, workshops and symposia. Its significance, however, never fails to attract major figures in clinical practice and research and so these form the backbone of the selection of sessions I present here.

Oncology

The prevalence of choroidal naevi in eyes is high (around 5 per cent in the UK) while that of the metastatic and potentially life-threatening choroidal melanoma is thankfully low. Bearing this in mind it is essential that optometrists are able to assess naevi and identify as accurately as possible any choroidal pigmentation that might represent the latter. Failure to do this might, at worst, result in patients missing out on essential early treatment of melanoma or, at the other extreme, a significant increased workload added to the secondary care sector – something it can ill afford.