Potential discussions for
Glaucoma Research Society Meeting
Kyoto, April 1-3, 2010
1. Angle closure glaucoma: the important issues
(Friedman, Sihota,Thomas, Tomita, Aung, Park)
- Mechanisms of angle closure
- Definitions of angle closure
- Who should have an iridotomy
- Cataract and other LPI complications
- Primary lens extraction for angle closure
2. Worldwide glaucoma management
(Goldberg, Budenz, Sekhar Tuulonen, Robin, Yamamoto)
- Could we agree on a consensus worldwide therapeutic approach to primary open angle glaucoma and primary angle closure disease?
- How does the GRS membership view the W.H.O. April, 2009 Geneva report?
- Can we apply cost-effectiveness criteria to glaucoma therapy without losing safety?
- Challenges and opportunities for glaucoma care in developing countries?
3. Long-acting glaucoma drug therapy
(Araie, Wax, Epstein, Kaufman, Lu, Tamm)
- What research is needed to produce long-lasting IOP lowering?
- What would be the best drug delivery method?
- What effect would such therapy have on our approach to glaucoma?
- Could we develop treatments to lower IOP for 6 months to one year at a time?
- What new delivery methods have promise? Pharmaco-genomics, receptor mechanism and new potential therapeutics
4. Basic mechanisms of glaucoma damage
(Martin, Crowston, Gupta, O’Brien, Yu)
- Role of glia
- Role of vasculature
- Role of biomechanical factors
- Role of mitochondria/oxidative stress/autophagy
5. Non-IOP lowering neuroprotective treatment
(Danesh-Meyer, Quigley, Mills, Pillunat, Varma)
- How can studies be designed to show effectiveness more efficiently?
- What are the most likely candidate agents for neuroprotection now?
- Why do animal studies not translate into human drug treatments?
6. New tonometers and telemetric IOP measurement
(Burgoyne, Kuwayama, Brandt, Zeyen)
- Do any of the new tonometers represent an improvement in management?
- Which emerging methods for continuous/telemetric tonometry are most promising?
- What research do we need to link telemetric measurement and control of IOP to progression?
- Would continuous IOP measurement add valuable information for therapeutic decisions?
7. How can we improve glaucoma surgery?
(Heuer, Shirato, Jampel, Traverso, Grehn, Khaw)
- IOP effectiveness of various methods at long term
- Complications in the long term
- Basic research aspects (including animal models)
- New methods—any ready for prime time?
- How can “success” be defined?
8. Health economics, glaucoma outcomes and progression
(Lee, Heijl, Douglas, Chauhan, Tuulonen)
- Can we justify the way we look for and treat glaucoma?
- What is the outcome of present glaucoma management?
- Are we performing too many tests, not enough, or the wrong ones?
- What is the best way to measure progression?
9. Clinical Implications of SD-OCT imaging of the ONH, NFL and retina in glaucoma
(Park, Medeiros, Burgoyne, Araie, Garway-Heath, Schuman)
- What is new in what we are seeing?
- What are the anatomic targets and why?
- What are the clinical implications for risk characterization
- What are the clinical implications for longitudinal change detection
- How should we design studies of diagnostic accuracy (cross-sectional and longitudinal) for imaging devices?
10. Biomarkers
(Gandolfi, Kee, Ritch, Tanihara, Coleman, Jonas, Richards, Sugiyama, Alward)
- Factors that influence outcome
- Secondary glaucomas, exfoliation
- Gene polymorphisms
- Measurable serum molecules