Dr. Kokame at the American Society of Retina Specialists Annual Meeting 2014 in San Diego

The American Society of Retina Specialists had their largest meeting ever with 1700 retina specialists from around the world meeting in San Diego.  What was impressive was not only the large attendance by retina specialists in the USA, but also by many from around the world.  Many leaders in retina from Japan, who have become close friends, were there and participated in the meeting.  Many from Japan had previously attended our 20th Anniversary meeting for The Retina Center at Pali Momi held in 2013.
We presented our results of our research on polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV).  One part or our presentation was on the localization of the PCV vessels.  Our work using indocyanine green (ICG) angiograms to guide optical coherence tomography (OCT) to localize the vessels provided some surprising results.  The vessels of PCV are not localized to the choroid, but are localized to the area above Bruch’s membrane and below the retinal pigment epithelium.  In other words, PCV is not in the choroid, but it is a variant of subretinal neovascularization.  We also presented the results of high dose ranibizumab for PCV at 6 months.  The high dose showed similar vision results as our prior studies with regular dose ranibizumab, but there was a trend towards more polyp closure in the higher dose study.
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Dr. Kokame (far left) speaks to the American Society of Retina Specialists on PCV. Dr. Wee (far right) prepares to speak after Dr. Kokame.

At this meeting I was also invited to be on Formula Retina – a television video presentation interviewing leading retina specialists.  I was invited to be on a panel for exudative macular degeneration with two other leading retinal specialists in the United States – Jay Duker MD, Chairman of New England Eye Center, Tufts University School of Medicine. and David Saraff MD, Clinical Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, UCLA School of Medicine, Jules Stein Eye Institute.  Our research on PCV was extremely important during the discussion of cases we provided to this presentation.