Diabetic macular edema (DME) is a common ocular complication of diabetes patients. It mainly involve macular which is closely related with visual function, thus DME is one of the major reasons causing visual impairment or blindness for diabetes patients. How to reduce the visual damage of DME is always a big challenge in the ophthalmic practice. In the past three decades, there are tremendous developments in DME treatments, from laser photocoagulation, antiinflammation drugs to antivascular endothelial growth factor therapy. However, the mechanism of DME development is not yet completely clear; every existing treatment has its own advantages and weaknesses. Therefore DME treatment still challenges us to explore further to reduce the DME damages.
The pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy is complicated. The vast network of multiple factors including unifying mechanism, inflammatory reaction, neuron degeneration and metabolic memory of glucose, and the four established pathogenic molecular pathways are hotspots of mechanism research for diabetic retinopathy. Nevertheless, these researches may be only one corner of the ldquo;icebergrdquo; of DR mechanism, and we still face enormous challenges in DR mechanism research. Collaboration with multiple disciplines to study the relationship between DR and diabetes and other systemic diseases, search novel therapy targets may increase the result in an unexpected windfall for DR basic research.
Ocular ischemic syndrome (OIS) is a disease seen in cardiology, ophthalmology, neurology, and neurosurgery, which can lead to brain and ocular symptoms induced by carotid artery obstruction or stenosis. In local and general manifestation, ocular symptoms usually appear first. Ocular symptoms show the prewarning effect of other ischemic damage. Ophthalmologists should pay attention to the clinical manifestation and damages of OIS. The establishment of multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment patterns for OIS is a pivotal issue for several disciplines.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can depict mild papilledema and slight changes in the internal segment and external segment; measure thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer, retinal thickness and macular volume; detect missing axons and damage to the macular ganglion cell complex. Thus, OCT has important application values and widespread prospects in diagnosis and differential diagnosis of glaucoma and nonglaucoma optic neuropathy, optic nerve diseases and macular diseases, outer and inner retinopathy as well as evaluation of curative effects, followup observation, prognosis and mechanisms in neuroophthalmological diseases. Neuro-ophthalmologists should pay more attention to the exploration and application of OCT in the field of neuro-ophthalmology.
Retinal break is the cause of primary retinal detachment, which remains a main cause for visual loss, and closure of the breaks is the principle of treatment. Currently surgical treatment can successfully reattach the retina in most cases. However, some basic questions still beset treatment of the disease, such as the cause responsible for development of retinal breaks and how to prevent it, and how the visual recovery can be satisfactory after reattachment surgery. Recent research indicates that the development of retinal breaks is associated with the process of vitreous liquefaction, posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) and abnormal vitreoretinal adhesion and traction. The retinal breaks can occur in the posterior margin of the vitreous base in the eye with complete PVD. Partial PVD may cause posterior breaks especially in cases of myopic traction maculopathy associated with schisislike thickening in the outer retina (foveoschisis) and vitreomacular traction. It is known that microstructural changes and atrophy of the macula, and epiretinal membrane formation are the reasons for poor vision after the retina is reattached. Therefore, more attention should be paid to further understand the vitreous pathology and traction mechanism, to research for methods of its clinical evaluation and strategy of prevention and treatment, and to accelerate visual recovery after reattachment surgery, in order to raise the standard of the disease treatment.
There are lots of imaging technologies in the ocular fundus disease field, including ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM), fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA), indocynine green angiography (ICGA), fundus photograph (FP) and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). However there is no standard for image formats among various fundus imaging equipment, technology application processes, thus the relevant data cannot be compared and analyzed. And improper operation of the instruments causes unstable image quality or image missing. Also lack of appropriate evaluation guidelines results in different interpretation of same image data. These three factors not only affect the fundus imaging device application efficiency, limit the sharing of fundus imaging resource, but also hinder the development of fundus imaging diagnostic applications. Therefore, instrument types, data acquisition protocol and data presenting formats should be standardized for ocular fundus image acquisition. The technicians who operate the machine should be trained regularly to follow the standard operating procedure of data acquiring, thus to ensure integrity, truthful and reliable data is collected. In order to enhance the application efficiency of fundus imaging equipment, save public health resources, to promote fundus imaging diagnostic technology development, we need to develop evaluation guidelines for fundus image data, establish a comprehensive system including remote consultation center, reading center and quality control center.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a set of age-related macular disease, is induced by a variety of factors. New intervention Methods help us to understand the AMD pathogenesis further; however, we only have limited knowledge of these novel Methods . To improve diagnosis and treatment practices of AMD, it is a priority to propose a standardized clinical procedure of AMD management in China. The Chinese Ocular Fundus Association has just proposed a Chinese AMD clinical pathway based on expertsprime;opinions and evidence based medicine. This clinical guideline is implementable for different stages and subtypes of AMD patients, and hopefully will be updated frequently with more clinical practice. Implementing this AMD pathway in China will improve the quality of clinical practice and research of AMD in China.
Intravitreal injection of antiangiogenic agents is widely used to treat retinal vascular disease. This therapy can induce regression of neovascular vessels; reduce intraocular inflammation and retinal vascular permeability, and control macular edema. However the action period of these agents is short, and thus this therapy need repeated injections which cause higher operation risk and cost. Retinal laser photocoagulation therapy can close retinal capillary non-perfusion area and neovascular vessels, reduce macular edema caused by vascular leakage. However, as its therapeutic effect is based on the destruction of the retinal tissues in the lesion area, this therapy need longer time to show its effects. When the disease is controlled by this method, it may already induce some structural irreversible damages to the retina, especially the macular. This is why the visual acuity is not satisfactory in some patients, even though the disease get controlled, macular edema gets disappeared and anatomical structure of retina get improved. Properly evaluating all the pros and cons of retinal photocoagulation and intravitreal injection of antiangiogenic agents, will allow us to explore a better way to combine these two therapies to treat retinal vascular diseases.
The etiological factors and pathogenesis of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are still unclear, which restricted its effective prevention and treatment. The current animal model widely used in ROP investigation is oxygen-induced retinopathy model, which is lack of specificity, and does not mimic the real pathogenesis status of human ROP patients. Thus, we should refresh our concept, seek breakthroughs in multidisciplines, integrate more risk factors of ROP, utilize the rising technique in transgenic animal, and improve the evaluation system for improving the current models or explore new animal models of ROP. It is important for prevention and treatment of ROP.
Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in vitreoretinal surgery. The treatment of vitreoretinal diseases has increased enormously and its related indications expanded widely with the contribution of the emerging novel technologies, methods, equipment and new ideas. Attaching importance to minimally invasive surgery, application of auxiliary drugs, development of improved equipment and surgical technique were the main features. Further basic and clinical research is necessary to promote innovation and development of vitreoretinal surgery in China to keep pace with and surpass advanced technology.