British Oculoplastic Surgery Society Meeting Part 2

On 22nd June we had the meeting of the British Oculoplastic Surgery Society, which is for about 150 UK oculoplastic surgeons, 150 trainees and 150 people from abroad. We had invited speakers from the US, the Philippines, South Korea, India, France, as well as Spain and Ireland.
I was invited to chair a session on watering eyes with Consultant Ophthalmologist Hugo Henderson, who was the organiser of the London meeting. We had three international invited speakers. First Dr Ashok Grover from New Delhi talked about nasolacrimal duct function in children, which is all about tear duct obstruction and the endoscope to see the lower end of the nasolacrimal duct.
I talked on “Harmony of DCR” which was all about harmonising the external and the endoscopic endonasal surgery for watering eyes. Dr Reynaldo Javate from the Philippines talked about trans canalicular endoscope lacrimal duct re-canalisation using his micro-endoscope, which is only 0.6 mm wide. This is thinner than the ones we have available in the UK which are between 0.9 and 1 mm wide. He inspired people to do the trans canalicular route, which is an area of lacrimal surgery we will see large advances in over the next five to ten years. We have had endoscopic endonasal DCI surgery now for 25 years, and it is time to try and do less invasive techniques, although they may not be as effective and have to be repeated. This will involve a change in approach to assessment and expectations from surgery. It is also attractive as it is less invasive and hence the down time is reduced.
Lastly, Professor Yoon Duck Kim talked about the management of canalicular obstruction which is the difficult area of lacrimal surgery for watering eyes, where the small ducts of the drainage channels are blocked.
During the rest of the day, we had sections on thyroid eye disease with Raymond Douglas from Los Angeles giving the guest lecture on “Breakthrough therapy and thyroid eye disease” which was all about the new drugs which are available for active thyroid eye disease.
In the free paper session, I found interesting papers including one on UV imaging of the face by Kareem Hassanin showing that people do not put sunscreen on evenly and leave off the important area surround the eyelids.
Christopher Schultz gave an excellent lecture on eyelid profile after ptosis repair. Dimitra Gousia talked about the use of 5% Imiquimod for superficial nodular and mixed type basal cell carcinoma.
I cannot mention all of the lectures. They were all enthusiastically received. I have to, however, mention Michael Tazartes from Paris who talked about periocular and facial lipo-filling, inspiring us to take up autologous fat transfer which we had initially learnt in the early 21st century, but have largely abandoned with the onset of fillers.
We had a very lively video “Tips and tricks” session on Friday 23rd chaired by Mr Rick Caesar from Cheltenham, Mr Austin McCormack from Aintree, showing us the power of videos of surgery in training whether it be the larger external DCR surgery or transconjunctival fat repositioning or the benefits of packing the nose at the end of an endoscopic DCR or how to take out a simple eyelid cyst.
As well as being scientifically a stimulating meeting, we enjoyed the Speakers’ Dinner, and we had our Gala Dinner for our guests and invited speakers at the Dorchester Hotel on Thursday.
The next meeting will be in 2018 in Dublin.
Meanwhile, please continue to read the blogs. If you have any queries or comments, do not hesitate to contact me.