Part 5: What if? Curing any eye disease with the snap of your finger | Ophthalmology Times

In celebration of Ophthalmology Times‘ 50th anniversary, we asked leading experts in the field, in a perfect world, if they had the ability to cure one eye disease or condition in the snap of their finger, what they would choose and why.

Video Transcript:

Editor’s note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Andrew J Barkmeier, MD:

There’s so many to choose from. So I think that age-related macular degeneration is proving very difficult. We have a number of impressive new findings and progress with some of the pharmacologic meds, but there’s still a long way to go. There’s a lot of severe vision loss, and these are patients that we see every day. So if I could snap my fingers, that’s what it would be.

Vivienna S Hau, MD, PhD:

It makes me think about one of the things I enjoy doing, and I love doing, which is being a guide for visually impaired runners. So I’ve guided over a dozen marathons now and and helped one even start their journey and run across the entire United States, but a lot of these patients, they have retinitis pigmentosa. So these individuals are doing amazing things with their limited vision that they have, but I know it’s caused a lot of strife and issues with their families, because they had good vision at one time, but then they slowly lose it over time. If there’s some way where I could help them, where they don’t lose their vision, I think that would be an amazing thing that that we could offer.

Danny A Mammo, MD:

Wow, that’s a very tough question. I would have to say that one of the saddest types of patients I see are young diabetics with a long working life ahead of them, families to take care of, who come in too late because of very severe proliferative diabetic retinopathy. I would love if for the magic wand, we could just kind of get rid of that disease for our young patients.