AOA 2026: Surgical and technological advances to improve quality of life and reduce drop burden in glaucoma
Jeff Banas, OD, FAAO, discusses his American Optometric Association Meeting presentation, highlighting the latest glaucoma technologies helping clinicians detect disease earlier and reduce patients’ dependence on eye drops.
Jeff Banas, OD, FAAO:
Hi, everyone. I’m Dr. Jeff Banas from the Eye Centers of Racine & Kenosha in Southeastern Wisconsin. I recently had the privilege of being able to present a lecture at the American Optometric Association’s national meeting in Phoenix this year. The lecture was titled, “The Cutting Edge of Glaucoma.”
What I love to talk about with this lecture that I’ve given throughout the country multiple times now really is just talking about the latest and greatest technologies that are available to us as optometrists and ophthalmologists that we can use to provide our patients the very best level of glaucoma care. We get to talk about all of the latest and greatest surgical innovations that are out there that can help us reduce drop dependence on our patients, certainly when they are having compliance issues.
Compliance issues are really something that is strong out there, something that really impacts our patients’ quality of life. It causes fluctuations in our patients’ eye pressure and ultimately progression in the disease state. Technologies that we have to help improve that quality of life, reduce those compliance issues, and stabilize the disease state is really something that I believe in and advocate for our patients and our care as a profession, as an industry.
We also talk a lot about some of the latest and greatest diagnostic tools that are available to us to assess, diagnose, and pick up changes in glaucoma earlier. We can really stop that boulder that’s trying to roll down the hill at the very early stages, rather than trying to stop it at the very bottom stages there and ultimately crush us when it gets that momentum. Technologies such as the Rabin Cone from Innova Systems, technologies that are incorporated into our workflow like AI, technologies such as OCT angiography, these are all great things that we got to discuss.
Ultimately, the takeaways that I hope everybody was able to get from me throughout that 2-hour lecture was there’s a lot of technologies that are available to us now that can help us pick up and detect changes in that disease state earlier and there’s a number of surgical innovations that are available to us to help improve a patient’s quality of life and reduce their drop burden.
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