For many, 2016 has been a year of upheaval, uncertainty and huge change. But while the political landscape, at home and abroad, has been rocked by a seismic shift in public opinion, the optometry world has seen sustained progress, technological advances and a number of significant breakthroughs.
The past 12 months may not have seen a revolution, but it’s certainly been an evolution of thinking around topics such as myopia management.
Practitioners and public alike now have a far greater awareness and understanding of this area and the UK in particular is waking up to the fact that it is time to help manage the epidemic of myopia.
Here at the BCLA we have seen huge levels of interest in our sessions on myopia management. It is the topic that has arguably captured the imagination of eye care professionals more than any other and let us hope momentum gathered in 2016 can be carried forward into the new year as the industry comes together to tackle this growing problem.
When we look back in 10 or 20 years time I believe we may reference 2016 as the year that monovision died.
The concept of wearing one contact lens that corrects only distance vision in one eye, and wearing another lens that corrects only near vision in the other eye has been well and truly blown out of the water by the sheer volume of good quality multifocal daily disposables out there.
With such a wide range of multifocals out there, patients are better catered for than ever before. There is simply no place in modern practice for monovision.
I look forward to 2017, with dry eye management coming sharply into focus and the advances in scleral lenses meaning even the most complex cases can be routinely resolved. It is also the BCLA’s 40th anniversary.
