Virtual conference, real life

Of the various conferences and events populating an eye care practitioner’s calendar, the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) conference has to be one of the most important. So, it was reassuring that some of the disappointment of cancelled live events was ameliorated by an excellent online virtual event. The BCLA Virtual Conference and Exhibition allowed practitioners from around the world an opportunity to hear of the latest science influencing contact lens and anterior eye practice and succeeded in being both relevant and up to date.

Professor Phil Morgan (Manchester University) kicked off a useful session looking at prescribing habits, including changes brought about by the pandemic, with a summary of his excellent work identifying patterns of contact lens prescribing over recent years, as is periodically published in his ‘trends’ articles for Optician. His figures always throw up new points of interest. For example, orthokeratology and myopia management are starting to show increased fitting of both rigid gas permeable (RGP) and multifocal soft lenses, and the predicted demise of RGPs is unlikely now to happen after all. The mean age of fitting in the UK is increasing, presumably due to better options for presbyopia, but is generally in the over 30s for most countries; something that is likely to change with paediatric fitting becoming more common. The uptake of daily disposables is well known to have increased, but there is also increased acceptance of silicone hydrogel dailies. Despite an increase in soft toric fits, the numbers do not, as yet, reflect the predicted number of patients for whom these lenses would be beneficial.