The Review is in "CCLS NZ 2024: Hits, puns and highlights"
May 4, 2024 Clare Luoni at NZ Optics
The Cornea and Contact Lens Society (CCLS) 2024 conference was held in Wellington from 22-23 March at the Harbour Venue Centre, a lovely historic building which must be prone to earthquakes and tsunamis if the opening notices were anything to go by. The theme for this year’s conference, ‘Mix Tape: all the hits and new tracks’ gave the speakers the opportunity for some fantastic ophthalmic puns, something that seems to appeal to optometrists, including yours truly. A special mention to Tui Homer of Wanaka, who really embraced this theme with a music ophthalmic pun for each clinical case in her presentation! Here are a few conference highlights.
The cornea
The ‘Foreign body and abrasion management workshop’ was hosted by Richard Johnson, apparently an 847 foreign-body-removalist veteran himself, so definitely the man for the job. With the help of some pig eyes, which had witnessed some severe grinding injuries, attendees were given ample opportunity for practical foreign-body removal and conjunctival abrasion cleaning. This was incredibly valuable as confidence is key with these particular skills. The workshop also provided a comprehensive management review of both these conditions, making it a very worthwhile undertaking.
Keratoconus was honoured with its own session of presentations, with the overarching key take-home message: it’s never too early to refer for corneal crosslinking, especially for young patients. Other useful take-aways: it’s possible to crosslink the same eye up to three times; supplementary vitamin D (1,000IU daily) is useful due to the serum vitamin deficiency found in keratoconic patients; and wearing a hat and sunglasses following crosslinking can be helpful for patients suffering haze in their vision (which usually disappears after six months).