Dr. Sutton’s session covers all things topical pharmacology

Bradley Sutton, OD, clinical professor at the Indiana University School of Optometry and service chief of the Indianapolis Eye Care Center, shared some take-aways from his presentation at the 2024 American Academy of Optometry Annual Meeting on topical pharmacology.

Bradley Sutton, OD:

I gave a couple of talks at Academy this year. One of them was a talk on topical pharmacology rounds. What I typically do in that talk is go over all the different categories of medications that we use topically in eye care, things like glaucoma drops, anti-infectives, antibiotics, antiviral drops, steroids, [and] dry eye type drops. I really try to go through all the different topical medications that we have available to us, and generally what we’ll do is we’ll talk about things like the little bit of the pharmacology in the drops, but mostly how people use those drops in their practice and give people. What I did during the talk was gave people little tips and nuances and how to use these different medications in their practice to better take care of their patients.

With each type of drop, I really try to give people little tips on nuances between several different drops. For example, with the steroids, I go through which ones are most likely to cause pressure elevation versus which ones are not very likely to cause pressure elevation. With the antibiotics, for example, I talked about things like which ones are most likely to have people be allergic to them, which ones have the least resistance profile? Then, when it comes to glaucoma drops, I talked about things like which ones are the most effective for various types of glaucoma and in what types of settings?

This is not really a study-driven talk so much as it is just an overview of different medications that are available and how to use those medications in practice.

The Academy is always a fantastic meeting. There’s such great education of all different types, and so I’m always just very happy to be involved and be happy to educate my peers and colleagues.